Accra-Ghana, Jan 31, GNA – Mr Maxwell Akosah-Kusi, Manager of Non-Revenue Water, Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL), has called on the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and other designated engineering institutions to inculcate digital courses into their syllabus.
He said at the entry levels, the digital skills of these engineering students from KNUST and other engineering institutions were quite limited.
Mr Akosah-Kusi made the call at the National Workshop on Digital Transformation Skills Development in the Water and Sanitation Sector in Accra.
The event sought to develop joint short-term courses on real-time digitalisation skills for young Master’s Degree students and professionals.
He said sometimes when there was the need to analyse flow pressure data with excel, there were challenges, hence the need for the inculcation.
“So, if KNUST and these engineering institutions can make some of these digital courses available, even right at the undergraduate level, in the way that teaching and learning are done, it will go a long way to support,” Mr Akosah-Kusi added.
Mr Sampson Oduro-Kwarteng, Director of Regional Water and Environmental Sanitation Center Kumasi (RWESCK), said the project was entitled, “Embedding Digitization Innovation and Circular Economy in Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (DICE-WASH), with funding from the French Embassy in Ghana.
He said the project was about introducing digital technologies or digital transformation into the curriculum at the master’s level and building the capacity of professionals in the water and sanitation sector, in digital transformation.
“As part of the capacity building, we introduced a six-month internship programme to build the competencies of our young graduates to attain employable skills when it comes to digital skills, which are needed by the industries,” Mr Oduro-Kwarteng added.
He said the essence of industries going in for the best graduate students in the engineering field to be digitally transformed would be of great help, rather than enrolling just people they know.
Dr Florent Englemann, a Representative from the French Embassy in Ghana, said the French Embassy aimed at contributing to the implementation of the SDGs in Ghana through the establishment and implementation of collaborations between Ghanaian and French partners around higher education and research.
He said there were over 40 Memorandums of Understanding active between Ghanaian and French universities and schools in areas of common interest: Health, Agriculture, Water Management, Engineering, Computer Sciences, Physics, French, Management and Business, Heritage, and Tourism.
Dr Englemann said the proportion of the population in Ghana with safely managed drinking water services nationally was 36 per cent, 57 per cent for urban and 11per cent for rural in 2017.
He said, “according to UNICEF and World Health Organization, 2019, a low proportion of water at household level, with 38 per cent of the population in 2017, met drinking water quality requirements.”
“For access to sanitation, it is estimated that Ghana in 2017 had 22 per cent access to improved sanitation,” Dr Englemann added.
