The Silicon Valley of Ghana is under the Ministry of Communications and the Ministry of Science and Technology.

Speaking at the launch, Dr Mensah said the Silicon Valley of Ghana will create business accelerators and incubators that can compete with tech-companies around the world, move Ghana into the 21st Century technological advancement and also support the high Speed Bullet Train that is being developed in Ghana.

[contextly_sidebar id=”6Jl3Pl7rvkGBfl3WcsL0YLX4dQ8e7b5z”]The occasion was also used to announce the members of the board of advisors to the Silicon Valley of Ghana.

Dr Mensah, the founder and chairman of the Silicon Valley of Ghana said the board members include Dr. Victor Lawrence (Stevens University); Dr. Michael Ansah (VP Dell UK); Dr. Isaiah Blankson (Hypersonic Expert, NASA); Prof. Obiri Danso (Vice Chancellor KNUST); Prof. Gabriel Ayum Teye (Vice Chancellor UDS); Prof. Joseph Ghartey Ampiah, (Vice Chancellor UCC); Dr. Frimpong Boateng (Minister Science and Innovation), and Mr. Alan Kyeremanteng (Minister Trade and Industry).

Others are Mrs Cecilia Dapaah (Minister for Aviation); Mr. Osafo Marfo (Senior Minister); Mrs. Ursula Owusu Ekuful (Minister for Communications); Fernando Hernandez (Microsoft); Robert Bobby Satcher (Astronaut), and Mr. Kwasi Adu-Gyan, Director General of GI-KACE.

Dr Mensah said membership of the board included Ghanaian expatriates in the diaspora who are desirous in the technological advancement of the development of Ghana.

He said the GI-KACE was chosen as the venue for the launch because ‘it is packed with the brainpower to support the Silicon Valley of Ghana in bridging the technology gap of the country’ he said.

The renowned inventor indicated that GI-KACE will be the pivot around which the Silicon Valley of Ghana will revolve, and serves as the link for both the universities and research institutions in Ghana with industrial corporations, advanced research centres’ and other “Tech giants”.

The innovation and competency centres which will link up with the GI-KACE, according to Dr Mensah, included the University of Ghana, the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, University of Development Studies and the University of Cape Coast.

Dr Mensah said the innovation and competency centres’ will work with industries and academia to create ICT products and services in Ghana.

The venture, he said, would also include the development of telemedicine platform for Ghana whereby physicians from Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, and Cape Coast University hospital will use broadband technology to connect with doctors in Universities in the USA such as John Hopkins and Universities in England and Germany to look at complex medical diagnostics.

He pledged his readiness to working hand-in-hand with GI-KACE to manufacture products and services essential in driving internet of things such as drones, smart phones, as well as telemedicine and transportation.

According to him, the Silicon Valley of Ghana will create business accelerators and incubators that can compete with tech-companies around the world, move Ghana into the 21st Century technological advancement and also support the high Speed Bullet Train that is being developed in Ghana.

Dr Mensah, who created the Silicon Valley of the South in the USA, said he will use the same methodology with the GI-KACE as the hub to link all the Universities and other higher technological institutions to develop advanced things just like they do in America.

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Source: Graphic.com.gh

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This according to him, will help the country fast track its development.

“We can have this in three years… latest 2021. When I started talking about this to President Obama, the Chinese had one high-speed rail. Now they have 40. That means they built four a year. Ghana can build a high-speed rail and have it ready in 2020,” he said on the Citi Breakfast Show on Tuesday.

[contextly_sidebar id=”lHD8HEri7zQhuPikNwVmoJ7WbIf6bTKr”]High-speed rail is a type of rail transport that operates significantly faster than traditional rail traffic, using an integrated system of specialized rolling stock and dedicated tracks.

A bullet train also known as high speed rail, is a passenger train that travels at very high speed

The first of such transport system began operations in Japan in 1964, and was widely known as the bullet train.

Many countries have developed high-speed rail to connect major cities, including Austria, Belgium, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Poland, Portugal, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States and Uzbekistan.

“We have done things that have changed America, changed England and changed the world entirely, so as a son of Ghana, I am here to see how we can move Ghana forward. We want Ghana to develop the bullet train. Ghana should have a bullet train that goes from Accra, Takoradi through Kumasi all the way to the border. Once you have a bullet train that can get from the south to the north in one-and-a-half hours, you are developed,” Dr. Mensah said.

Leveraging natural resources

Ghana may not have the resources to fund such an endeavour completely, but the engineer said the country can leverage on its natural resources to make the bullet train possible.

“If we can leverage three percent of our minerals to get $19 billion from them [China], there is no way we can’t negotiate to have them build infrastructure that will really move the country forward, and that will be a significant transformational transportation system that will be the first in West Africa.”

China had 22,000 kilometres of high-speed rail as at December 2016, which accounts for two-thirds of the world’s total figure.

Developing countries like India, Mexico and Saudi Arabia, have high-speed trains with Dr. Mensah stressing that “all the developing countries are now trying to do this and this will move Ghana into the 21st century.”

“Once you build the high-speed rail, you can manufacture other things that come out of that technology, whether it is cars, whether it is advanced systems for your hospitals or satellites. Once you get that thing, you can do a whole lot of stuff.”

$21.5 billion needed to fully revamp rail sector

Ghana’s rail sector has been struggling for survival, and the Ghana Railway Development Authority has noted that $21.5 billion is needed to procure new coaches, refurbish existing lines, and construct additional 4,007.6 kilometers of railway lines across the country.

The railway master plan which was completed in 2013, proposes a new railway network comprising of 4,007.6 kilometers across the country.

About Dr. Thomas Mensah

Dr. Thomas had his secondary and tertiary education in Ghana, and managed to secure a scholarship to further his education abroad.

Dr. Mensah’s works relates to the development of fiber optics and nanotechnology.

He has 14 patents, 7 of which were awarded within a period of six years, and he was inducted into the US National Academy of Inventors in 2015.

He served as Editor-in-Chief of the international textbook Nanotechnology Commercialization published by AIChE and John Wiley & Sons. The book is aimed at moving Nanotechnology from the laboratory environment to the global marketplace.

He currently has developed a smart watch which he calls “Hug Watch.” According to him, Hug Watch can change TV stations by serving as a remote control, also makes and receives calls.

Dr. Thomas Mensah granted the interview on the back of a series of lectures he is expected to deliver at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) from November 22 to 25, 2017 dubbed RP Baffour Lectures.

He will also be receiving an Honorary Doctorate, (D.Sc Honoraris Causa) from the university after the lectures.

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By: Godwin Akweiteh Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @AlloteyGodwin

The post Ghana can have bullet trains by 2021 – Ghanaian inventor appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

Dr. Mensah, while working for American company, Corning Glass Works, was able to help improve and commercialize a fiber optic technology the company had been working on for 15 years without success.

Prior to the invention, copper wires were used as a major channel for data transmission and networking workstations.

Recounting his exploits on the Citi Breakfast Show on Tuesday, Dr. Thomas said while working for Corning, he was given a task to improve the fiber optics project which he did tirelessly to birth the technology which he described as “the most important invention in the 21^st century.”

“I didn’t know that the impact was going to be big like this. All I knew was that there were four inventors, three whites and me. And they said, Dr. Mensah, we’ve come all the way with the glass part, but we think you are the only one who can do the part that will move us to the industrial stage. That was the challenge I had, and I worked on it for every day. I was so focused on solving that problem, and what I did was to use the technology I had applied somewhere else whereby when you melt the glass and you are pulling it like toffee to be glass strand, you have to put a coating on it immediately to protect. So the ability to put a coating on it while you are pulling it was their limitation. They couldn’t pull it more than 2 meters per second. So for 15 years it stayed in the lab till I got there and the problem was handed over to me.”

“The question was how do we move this from the laboratory into factories, manufacturing, so that we can move into the global market? That was the problem I solved. It was a global problem. Until then, fiber optics were available in the lab, and they were making it in two meters per second. So the lasers that are transmitted along this fiber is sending the Facebook pictures, Instagram, the entire social media experience is going through this laser base fiber optics. This is really what goes through the world,” he added.

He said when people are “sending Facebook pictures, YouTube videos, your emails, tweets; everything is going down this [fiber optic] glass and it travels at milliseconds. In other words, you can sit here to upload Youtube videos, someone is viewing in the US or China in few seconds because of that technology.”

The inventor said, although he did not envision the huge impact the fiber optic project will make in the technology space and the world at large, he said most of his inventions and ideas he espoused in books he’s authored have been adopted by multi-million dollar technology giants to expand.

“…I have four books on innovation. The first one is fiber optic engineering, it’s used all over the world. So those are sold and you get money out of it. My latest book is called nanotechnology commercialization.”

About Dr. Thomas Mensah

Dr. Thomas had his secondary and tertiary education in Ghana, and managed to secure a scholarship to further his education abroad.

Dr. Mensah’s works relates to the development of fiber optics and nanotechnology.

He has 14 patents, 7 of which were awarded within a period of six years, and he was inducted into the US National Academy of Inventors in 2015.

He served as Editor-in-Chief of the international textbook Nanotechnology Commercialization published by AIChE and John Wiley & Sons. The book is aimed at moving Nanotechnology from the laboratory environment to the global marketplace.

He currently has developed a smart watch which he calls “Hug Watch.” According to him, Hug Watch can change TV stations by serving as a remote control, also makes and receives calls.

Dr. Thomas Mensah granted the interview on the back of a series of lectures he is expected to deliver at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) from November 22 to 25, 2017 dubbed RP Baffour Lectures.

He will also be receiving an Honorary Doctorate, (D.Sc Honoraris Causa) from the university after the lectures.

Click below for the full interview on the Citi Breakfast Show:

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By: Godwin Akweiteh Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @AlloteyGodwin

The post Facebook, Google, using my inventions – Ghana’s Dr. Thomas Mensah appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

In the interview, Dr. Mensah touched on his educational background and his exploits in the technology space so far.

Dr. Mensah, who had his secondary and tertiary education in Ghana has 14 patents, 7 of which awarded within a period of six years, and was inducted into the US National Academy of Inventors in 2015.

He served as Editor-in-Chief of the international textbook, ‘Nanotechnology Commercialization’ published by AIChE and John Wiley & Sons.

The book is aimed at moving Nanotechnology from the laboratory environment to the global marketplace.

He has also developed a smartwatch which he calls “Hug Watch.” According to him the Hug Watch, can change TV stations while also being able to make and receive calls.

Dr. Thomas Mensah granted the interview ahead of a series of lectures he is expected to deliver at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) from November 22 to 25, 2017 dubbed the ‘RP Baffour Lectures.’

He will also be receiving an Honorary Doctorate, (D.Sc Honoraris Causa) from the university after the lectures.

Listen to the full interview on the Citi Breakfast Show below:

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By: citifmonline.com/Ghana

The post Bernard Avle interviews Ghanaian innovator Dr. Mensah [Audio] appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.