Let's Support Development of STI to Drive Ghana Beyond Aid Agenda

Today Science and technology are the driving force behind the development of the world.

Many countries around the world are relying on science and technology to propel their economies.

Again, based on rapid scientific insight, technological breakthroughs are changing life into the foreseeable future and technological progress is not only affecting productivity directly but it is also creating powerful tools to work with.

Without doubt, humans have limited ability to do so many things on their own. So, science and technology are helping humans to overcome the limitations that evolution has placed on us.

Beside, many scientific inventions have helped us to invent instruments and equipment to manufacture countless medicines, proteins and many sophisticated technological tools.

Indeed many countries are forging ahead due to reliance on science, technology and innovation (STI) and it is not surprising that the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has been championing STI as a key driver of Ghana Beyond Aid agenda.

According to the President, countries that are transitioned from underdevelopment, did so on the back of application of science and expressed government's intention to use same approach to bridge the country's industrialisation gap.

Speaking at a week-long conference, organised by the Ghana Institute of Engineers, the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation and MasterCard Foundation, the President said, despite the country's democratic successes in recent years, it had a lot of unfinished business in providing dignified standard of living in moving the country into the path of prosperity.

The missing link, according to him is due to the technology gap in the country, coupled with the structure of the economy which is largely dependent on production of raw materials and over dependent on foreign aid.

To reverse the trend, he announced a number of initiatives that the government was implementing to bridge the technology gap to enable STI drive the Ghana Beyond Aid agenda and make the country self-reliant on foreign capital and technology.

The Ghanaian Times cannot agree more with the President as technology has found innumerable direct applications in the production of capital and consumer goods.

We hope that our scientists and engineers would take advantage of government's commitment to increase its budget allocation to the development of STI for the benefit of the country.

We are hopeful that if all of us play our part, the impact would inevitably affect the nation's technological capabilities and hence affect productivity and presumably economic welfare.

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