The Presidential aspirant of the Convention People’s Party (CPP), Dr Paa Kwesi Nduom, has said a CPP administration will pursue knowledge-based technology that is driven by indigenous research scientists to transform the Ghanaian society into a modern state.
He said the poverty gap in Ghana was as a result of the technological disparity, and that a CPP government would reverse this trend.
Dr Nduom said this when he took his turn as the first presidential aspirant at an interaction between presidential aspirants and scientists from the Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Accra yesterday.
The programme, which was telecast live on GTV, was on the theme “Vision for science, technology and innovations for the development of Ghana: The role of CAR”.
Dr Nduom said a CPP government would for a start ensure that at least one per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was dedicated to science and technology research and education.
He said just as Ghana’s first President, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, he would also become the Patron of CSIR to raise its profile, boost morale and give it priority attention, as was done by India and South Korea.
He added that all science and technology facilities and educational institutions in the country would be upgraded, by raising science and technology to Cabinet level, provide tax incentives to businesses to apply scientific and technological knowledge to industry and the larger society.
Dr Nduom said just as other developed countries had used other measures to prevent Ghanaians goods and services into their market in a move to protect their markets, his administration would also do same within the confines of World Trade Organisations (WTO) tenets to protect local industries.
He also explained that his administration would use the purchasing power of the government to provide ready markets for Ghanaians industries that had used scientific and technological expertise provided through Ghanaian scientific ingenuity.
Dr Nduom said the provision of ready markets for such industries would in turn generate employment for Ghanaians, foreign exchange for the government and a revolving fund for more scientific research and advancement.
He said his administration would support CSIR to undertake more research development, production and training of trainers in predetermined areas of agricultural industrial raw materials base to ensure the empowerment of targeted human resources from the polytechnics and universities to drive the nation.
He said all these laudable programmes would come to naught if the performance of students and pupils in their final examination continued to deteriorate due to demoralised teachers, lack of adequate teaching and learning materials, especially science and computer laboratories, houses for teachers, among other.
Dr Nduom said South Korea put up 22 additional scientific and engineering institutions to bring to 83 what they had, and their GDP grew by $96 billion, but at the same time Ghana maintained its 13 which were under-resourced, and explained that “what this means is that our salvation lies in science and technology.
He said other studies in the USA and Singapore, on their state support for science and technology, revealed that no country had progressed in any significant way without investment by the state in science and technology.
He said because many of the resource going into research in Ghana were from foreign donors they were always targeted at specific research, which in most instances did not build permanent local capacity for continuous innovations.
Dr Nduom said the CPP planned to raise productivity in agriculture to a point where only five per cent of labour in the sector could feed all Ghanaians and export part of the surplus, and that “through this the informal sector will give way to the formal sector of high social and legal protection, such as pension, annual leave and fair treatment of all workers”.
On the massive exodus of scientists from the CSIR to the universities because of better condition, he promised to upgrade conditions of research institutions to attract more scientists to both research institutions and universities.
In his welcome address, the Chairman of the CSIR, Dr A.B. Salifu, said the Food Research Institute of the centre had been accredited with ISO17025 which was a formal recognition of its demonstration of competence and ability to produce valid test results that were acceptable internally.
“With this accreditation the CSIR provides services in food quality testing that meet with international standards and requirement of export trade”, he said.
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