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Africa54. Although South African regulations prevented the concept from being developed further there, Dakar’s Computing Centre quickly saw the potential of this wireless solution, and customized it to provide higher bandwidth connectivity across Dakars campuses.
5.2. Ghana The author visited Ghana from 01 to 07 February 2003. During that time, he interviewed a wide range of stakeholders, visited Khumasi and held E-Campus Workshop on 07 February 2003 at GIMPA in Accra. Details of the participants are provided in Appendix A. The main host was Mr Kofi de Heer-Menlah, who provided outstanding organizational support, transported the author to and from Kumasi, and gave valuable advice regarding both ICTs and HEIs in Ghana.
5.2.1. Summary of Ghana’s Tertiary Sector Ghana has approximately 16 HEIs, 11 of which are in the capital, Accra. There are three large public universities at Legon (Accra), Kumasi, and Cape Coast, with several teacher training instiutions, most of the remaining HEIs being young, private institutions providing only a few specialists or sustainable subjects55. The University of Ghana56, Legon, has 14,700 students and 4,000 staff in 13 faculties. Legon was established in 1948 as the University College of the Gold Coast, an affiliate college of the University of London. Following independence in 1957, the university was organised as the University of Ghana and in 1961 began to award its own degrees. The Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) was established as a public tertiary institution in 1963 from a previous college of technology. The main Kumasi campus and the satellite mining campus at Tarkwa have some 2,500 staff and 13,000 students in 13 faculties. The University of Cape Coast, has 7,600 students and 2,200 staff in eight faculties, and was established in 1962. The author visited Ghana University, spent a day at KNUST in Kumasi, and also spent a day at one of the smaller HEIs, the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration57. GIMPA was established in 1961 as a single campus public service, civil servant training centre changing to a commercialized public institution in February 2002. It is classified as a tertiary institution, although its status as a university remains unclear. It has about 40 teaching faculty, 90 other staff, and some 1,000 students, mostly on short post-graduate courses of between one day and three years duration, but averaging 1-4 weeks. Its courses are accepted by the Accreditation Board, and its undergraduate degrees are expected to gain accreditation by September 2003.
5.2.2. E−Campus: Related National Policy and Strategy Issues In general, participants emphasised that the development of Ghana’s Information Society was multifactoral and complex, facing such problems as the lack of policies at all levels; insufficient funds, either from government or the international community; limited telephone and Internet access; limited electrical power access; and low levels of both ICT specialists and general ICT literacy. They agreed that to date, ICTs for higher education initiatives in Ghana have tended to be fragmented, donor driven, inflexible, and usually departmentally compartmentalized both at the institution and government levels. They believe that the many scattered ICT projects at all levels need to be replaced by integrated, coordinated, and sustainable strategic initiatives. In particular, Ghana needs more collaboration between tertiary sector institutions, and could, for example, learn from Kenya’s experiences with KENET (see below). Ghana’s National Council for Tertiary Education is playing an overarching coordination role. Although the Department of Education has set up a centre for distance education, it is struggling to overcome the traditional conservatism of most of the lecturers, and to coordinate activities at the national level.
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http://www.infodev.org/projects/telecommunications/003telematics/finaltad.doc http://elctl.msu.edu/AUP-temp/frameset.php?page=ed-directory.php 56 http://www.ug.edu.gh 57 http://gimpa.edu.gh 55
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