How many scientists does a country need to turn things around?

Science and technology is linked to the human development index. This means that science and technology is as critical to a nation as water is to fish or air is to man.

To lift this statement into a truism, I just took a look around. Fatalism or superstition is both a reaction and conclusion to enquiry about phenomena wherever science is given token attention. These are the places where everything we don’t understand is either a creation or the curse of the gods or spirits.

In Ivy League institutions and space laboratories of America and the rest of the industrialised world, there are Africans who are making significant contributions. The point here is that science is not “white”, nor is witchcraft “black”. Any country that does not have the critical mass of scientists to turn things around is going nowhere. 

So, how many scientists does a country need to turn things around? The United Nations Educational and Scientific Organisation (UNESCO) has set the global average at 1,180 scientists per million population. The African average is 164 scientists, and the sub-Saharan average is 80 scientists per million population

Guess what? Ghana’s average is 39 scientists per million population. Only 25 per cent of Ghanaian university students offer science. Even those who offer science as first degree go on to add an MBA and end up in a bank or some other (more ‘lucrative’) sector.

Thus, scientists in Ghana are an endangered specie. Progressively, science and technology training at the various public universities has been marginalised. While the private universities are training students mostly in the humanities and business programmes, the state universities — even those that were established primarily for science and technology training — are currently turning out equal numbers (at best) of graduates in the sciences and the humanities.

Fact: A lot of the industries in Ghana outsource their technologies offshore. Any wonder, then, that we import everything, from what we wear, what we eat to the roof over our heads?

The World Bank projects that if Africa is going to deliver home-grown development, we must produce 10,000 scientists per year. And mind you: a first degree science graduate is not a scientist.

Within the last few years, Ghana’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), under the Director-Generalship of Dr Victor Agyeman, has decided that the only way this country is ever going to have scientists is to produce them.

Thus has been born the CSIR College of Science and Technology (CCST). No other institution in Ghana has the capacity and resources to do this better.

The CSIR has them in its various institutes in Accra, Kumasi, Tamale and Kade.

This initiative will not be the first in the world. Renowned scientific institutions of higher learning such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) started as a research centre. The Texas A & M University started as an agriculture research centre, on the lines of Ghana’s example at Kwadaso in Kumasi. The famous Okinawa Research University started like CSIR and Princeton University has 75 research institutions and centres.

For resource persons, the CSIR does not have to look anywhere but within. Professor Joseph Cobbinah, the President of the College, says: “If our current numbers are inadequate, we will use retired scientists – men and women whom we had no business retiring in the first place, with so much in them.”

Courses on offer will lead to Master of Philosophy, Master of Science and Doctorate degrees in Agro-Processing Technology & Food Bio-Sciences, Soil Science & Conservation Agriculture, Fisheries & Aquaculture, Industrial Animal Nutrition & Feed Production, Molecular Biology & Biotechnology, Plant Health Management, Climate Change & Integrated Natural Resources Management.

The CCST will use the Moodle Platform, a virtual learning system to support the face to face interaction between faculty and students. It will enable CCST to develop and manage courses on-line, including on-line feedback and collaboration, peer assessment and translation portal.

The strength of the CCST; indeed, its defining mark, will be its ability to connect research and education to industry. The college will undertake firm-based research. Prof Cobbinah explains: “This means that the college will identify problems of industry and attach students thereto to conduct the research in-situ; indeed, 70 per cent of the student’s time will be spent on the field. “Not only that. We are going to set up liaison offices whose only duty is to identify problems in industry and the community.

Looking at its curriculum, the presence of ‘Business/entrepreneurship’ courses raised my brows. But Prof. Cobbinah explains: “When scientists are trained only in science, they are not exposed to ideas that help them to grow even in the science environment. When auditors arrive and start querying financial reports, the scientist who came in as an engineer and now finds himself at the head of the institution feels inadequate.”

To internationalise knowledge and expose students to the very latest developments worldwide, CCST will adopt the Moodle platform, which provides a virtual learning environment that complements the face-to-face physical interaction via the internet.