Go to any university library in Ghana – Legon, KNUST, UCC, UDS.
You will find the solution to galamsey. You will find the solution to tomato rot. You will find the solution to flooding in Accra. You will find the solution to gari with stones.
It is all there. Bound. Graded. Shelved. Eaten by termites.
Yet next year, government will fly to Israel to learn how to grow tomatoes. Government will import a $20 million flood expert from Netherlands. Government will import a new cassava processing machine from China.
Why does Ghana still import solutions to problems we have already researched?
1. WE RESEARCH FOR PROMOTION, NOT FOR PROBLEM
The professor’s job in Ghana is to become professor. Not to solve Ghana’s problem.
To become Associate Professor, you need 15 papers. So you publish “Assessment of Post-Harvest Losses of Tomatoes at Pwalugu.” You get promoted. The paper ends there. You don’t build the solar dryer you recommended in page 89.
The student does MPhil on “Low-Cost Water Filter Using Neem Seeds.” He defends, he graduates, he goes to Canada. The filter prototype is left in the lab to rust.
We have over 100,000 theses in this country. How many have become products? Less than 1%.
2. THERE IS NO BRIDGE BETWEEN CAMPUS AND COMMON MARKET
In Rwanda, if you do research on cassava, the government forces you to work with a cooperative. In Ghana, there is no bridge.
The tomato farmer at Pwalugu has never met the Crop Science lecturer at UDS who has published 10 papers on tomatoes. They are just 30 minutes apart. But they have never sat under one tree.
Our universities teach in English. Our market women think in Twi, Dagbani, Ewe. The research is written in academic English that even the DCE cannot understand. Where is the two-page summary in simple language? Where is the radio discussion?
So we import from China because China brings the solution to the market. Ghana brings the solution to the library.
3. GOVERNMENT DOES NOT TRUST GHANA RESEARCH
This is painful but true.
When government wants to build a road, it hires a consultant from Germany. When it wants to fight galamsey, it wants a drone from Israel. When it wants to digitize, it calls Estonia.
Meanwhile, the Building and Road Research Institute (BRRI) at KNUST has been researching pothole-free local materials since 1970. Soil Research Institute has soil maps for every district.
But MDAs don’t read them. Because they are not glossy. Because they are not foreign.
We believe that if it is not imported, it is not quality. That is mental slavery.
4. FUNDING IS FOR PAPER, NOT FOR PRODUCT
GETFund will give you GH¢50,000 to do research and publish. But will GETFund give you GH¢500,000 to mass produce your cassava peeler for 100 women in Bawku? No.
Donors fund Ghana to write reports. World Bank gives money for “study on flooding.” After the study, they give another money for another study next year. The study itself has become the business. If you solve the flooding, the next study money will stop.
So we are stuck in a cycle of reports.
WHAT WE MUST DO – IF WE WANT TO LOOK SMARTER
We cannot continue like this.
A. Make policy brief compulsory. Every PhD, every funded research must produce a 2-page plain English + Ghanaian language brief and present it on radio and to the relevant District Assembly. No brief, no promotion.
B. Tie promotion to adoption, not just publication. If 20 farmers use your seed and testify, that should be equal to 5 papers. If your engineering design is used by Kantanka or a Suame Magazine welder, that should be worth more than Scopus.
C. Create University-Industry Market Days. Every semester, each university must exhibit its solutions at the regional market, not at a conference hall. Let the farmer touch it, price it, criticize it.
D. Government must buy Ghana research first. Before government imports any solution, it must publish: “We have a problem of tomato rot. Has any Ghanaian university solved it?” If yes, fund them to scale. Only if no, then import.
Ghana is not poor because we lack solutions. We are poor because our solutions are locked in libraries while we are busy importing the same solutions from people who came to learn from us 20 years ago.
The white man does not have a better brain. He has a better system of turning his professor’s idea into a product in the shop.
Until we do that, we will keep having professors on paper, but problems on the ground.
Alexander Afriyie, supervising editor, ghanacrimereport.com and ghanatalk.com