KsTU gives innovation a major boost -inaugurates K-Innovation Hub 

In fulfilment of its mandate to nurture students to become innovators for national economic development, the Kumasi Technical University (KsTU) has inaugurated the Centre for Technology Transfer and Skills Development (CTTSD) to train innovators.

Known as the K-Innovation Hub, it is designed to foster innovation, entrepreneurship and technological advancements.

It aims to become a leader in innovation and technology transfer in Ghana and beyond for economic development.

Among innovations mentioned at the inaugural ceremony were Unarmed Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Drone, Mechanised Spraying Machine, RC Fish Feeder, Self-Balancing Wheelbarrow, Electric Four Mixer, Electric Cooker, Electric Vegetable Cutter, Air Quality, Laser Cutter, Smart Bin, 3D Printers, Virtual Reality (VR) and others.

Professor Gabriel Dwomoh, the Vice-Chancellor (VC) of KsTU, who inaugurated the Hub, said the mandate of the university was to train graduates to be innovators, saying “today’s event sought validation from the university”.

The mandate of Technical Universities, Prof. Dwomoh posited, was to create graduates that are innovative minded, who, at the end of their studies, should be able to create something for themselves.

The concept, according to the varsity don cannot, however, be achieved without the enabling environment for students to advance their ingenuity prowess.

“You cannot develop the innovation mind-set of graduates if you do not have the full compliments of the logistics that will aid them in creating this innovative mind-set,”

Professor Dwomoh stated and added that, “Innovation Hub is one of the resources that one needs in order to achieve the objective of innovative mind-set for the graduates.

The K-Innovation Hub, the Vice-Chancellor continued, sought to assist graduates develop an innovative mind-set so that at the end of the day, when they conceive any idea, they could make use of the Hub.

He, therefore, urged students of KsTU to take advantage of the facility to shape their innovation ideas and mindset.

“I want to encourage all our students to make use of the innovation Hub because if you visit most of the developed countries, what they do is that they provide an enabling environment like what we have done for students to make sure that ideas can come into reality; You conceptualise your ideas and as a technical university, we must first of all prioritise how we can encourage our students to develop entrepreneurship mind-set.”

On behalf of the University’s management, Professor Dwomoh expressed appreciation to the managers of the KsTU Hub for initiating what he described as a “brilliant idea of assisting management to deliver on their mandate because entrepreneurship is what we are all targetting. At the end of the day, we produce graduates that are job creators and not takers.”

In an interaction with the media, Ing. Dr. Joseph Ribeiro, head of the KsTU Hub, explained that the Innovation Hub had been growing a cohort of students who could innovate and not just innovation, but finalise what they have done.

 

 

Sharing innovations made by the Hub with The Chronicle, Ing. Dr. Ribeiro disclosed that his outfit had produced an air quality device, which measures the air quality on campus.

This device, according to him, puts out data including temperature, humidity and others.

Ribeiro revealed to the media that his administration was planning to expand their operations.

“We are trying to get into these spaces so our first step is to expand our network to cover the campus we occupy as a university, and we are hoping that we can liaise with EPA to assist us to build more devices. We should be able to deploy our devices across the metros of Kumasi”, he said.

Speaking to a second year Mechanical Engineering student, Ms. Rita Kunyah, she explained that the reason she read Engineering was to bring her ideas into reality. She stated that when she realised that the Hub could assist her, she decided to join them because as a team “we can share ideas.”

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