African Engineers: The Queen Doesn’t Loiter

In the Kingdom of Ashanti, which contained about portion of current Ghana, convention records state that it was the sovereign mother who was liable for presenting new advances, for example, the iron tool and the oil light. So when the recently shaped Technology Consultancy Center (TCC) of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, was looking for a logo in 1972, it picked a customary plan, imprinted on fabric by the Adinkra specialists of the town of Ntonso and called ‘ohemaa nkyinkyin’ or the sovereign mother doesn’t saunter about with nothing to do. The image doesn’t just have a name yet additionally a message: ‘esese me danedane me ho na meye neama pii, I should change myself and play numerous parts.’ Engineering, similar to some different callings, has customarily been viewed as a male safeguard, so it is satisfying to take note of that in Ghana, over a wide span of time, ladies have been agreed due credit for their association in specialized development.

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One movement that is customarily connected with ladies is jam making, and one of Ghana’s soonest and best mechanical business people was a jam creator, Esther Ocloo, who needed to secure a decent arrangement of specialized information in building up her enormous present day food preparing plant, Nkulenu Industries, at Madina close to Accra. Esther Ocloo was chosen the primary leader of the Ghana Manufacturers Association when it was established in 1958 (as the Federation of Ghana Industries) and she was reappointed to serve a second term from 1978 to 1980. Her tremendous commitment to grassroots industrialisation in Ghana was perceived by the TCC and she was granted a privileged DSc by KNUST at its Silver Jubilee assembly for the conferment of degrees in 1976. It was to be one of the most punctual of numerous public and global distinctions presented upon her throughout the following 25 years.

Not long after the demise of Dr Ocloo in 2002, her niece, Dr Peggy Oti-Boateng, was named overseer of the TCC. Peggy had joined the TCC in 1982 to serve her time of National Service and she remained on to advance ladies’ activities in food handling and beekeeping. After certain years away, remembering reading for a PhD for Australia, Peggy got back to the TCC as a senior part, prompting her arrangement as chief in 2003. So the contribution of ladies, and the Nkulenu family, in grassroots mechanical advancement proceeded into the twenty first century.

Cecilia Apawu moved on from KNUST in 1989 with a degree in mining and mineral designing. For her last year proposition, Cecilia decided to work with the TCC’s Suame Intermediate Technology Transfer Unit (ITTU) on an investigation of the innovation of the aluminum pot casters of Suame Magazine, Ghana’s biggest casual modern territories. The work she achieved was a genuine illustration of how the logical strategy can be applied to comprehend and in the end update a set up grassroots industry. Afterward, subsequent to joining the GRATIS task at Tema, close to Accra, Cecilia had the option to rehash her investigation with the craftsmans in Ashiaman and set up a preparation program at the Tema ITTU to assist them with improving the nature of their items.

In the mid 1980s, at the Suame ITTU, no young ladies approached for apprenticeships in any of the designing workshops. This was presumably a result of the solid male custom in the artworks of the Magazine. Notwithstanding, when the ITTU came to Tamale, and later to Tema, it found no such boundaries to female enlistment and young ladies applied for apprenticeships in expanding numbers. The cycle was helped by the presence of female designers and professionals who without a doubt urged their sisters to follow them into designing. By the turn of the century, a few previous female disciples of the Tamale and Tema ITTUs were running their own little designing workshops furnished with present day machine devices.

Quite possibly the best tasks of the Tema ITTU was the presentation of the privately fabricated metal-turning machine. This advancement was provoked by the accessibility of aluminum sheets created in Tema by Aluworks Ltd. Utilizing machines made in Tema by Kofi Asiamah’s Redeemer workshop and others, business people delivered huge amounts of homegrown pots and skillet that sold at serious costs in neighborhood markets. In 5 years the business developed to incorporate in excess of a hundred makers utilizing an expected 5000 laborers. A significant number of the spearheading business visionaries were ladies who had once sold imported results of a comparable sort. It could be hundreds of years since the sovereign mother of Ashanti saw the upsides of the oil light yet ladies in Ghana today rush to spot occasions to profit by new modern turns of events.