BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY GAINS INTEREST IN GHANA
July 3, 2018
By Robert Anane
Accra, May 17, GNA – The Blockchain technology, which is increasingly attracting the curiosity of startups, large corporations and governments, is also starting to gain interest in Ghana.
This came to light, when the Ashesi D: Lab, Blockchain Society Ghana, Kumasi Hive and Devless, delivered the Blockchain Hackathon 2018 program in Accra.
The programme, the first of its kind in Ghana, is in partnership with the Ministry of Trade and the Association of Ghana Industries.
The Blockchain Hackathon brought together some creative and inspiring teams from all over Ghana to design and pitch blockchain-inspired solutions for a supply chain platform that could motivate solution areas or even be adopted by the Ministry of Trade.
The platform solutions presented at the Hackathon illustrated how blockchain technology could be used to enable buyers (large scale contractors) to engage suppliers (sub-contractors and Small and Medium Enterprises) in exchange arrangements that ensured that the buyer’s needs were met while supplier’s capacity was also enabled.
The program affirmed the technology’s great potential for developing solutions to challenges facing the nation.
At the hackathon, creative teams from all over the country presented blockchain-inspired concept solutions on how the technology can be applied to address the challenges at different sections of the country’s supply chain system.
The teams presented solutions spanning smallholder suppliers and buyers; smart subcontracting management; and tracking systems for supply and production. For example, the AgriXchain team presented a smart contracting system that seeks to connect smallholder suppliers to buyers.
In another presentation, the Food and Drug Integrity Network (FADING) team, also illustrated how a blockchain system can be used to ensure food safety as well as tracking supply and production levels. The session also included a presentation from PlatformX from KNUST and Smerge, whose solutions focused on match making and subcontracting management in the supply chain sector, respectively.
Commenting on the potential impact of the solutions after the event, Mr Paa Kow Bartels, the Lead for the Supplier Exchange platform at Ministry of Trade and Industry (MOTI), who also provided the challenge for hackathon, applauded the presentations and discussed the possible applications of the solutions concepts.
He also emphasized how these concepts may be adopted by MOTI.
Mr. Bartels spoke of the likely favourable effect of such systems like PlatformX’s solution, which was focused on matching suppliers’ capacity to the requirement definitions of the buyers.
He explained that such a system could enhance and create a transparent system that could foster investor confidence in the Ghanaian economy.
Consequently, Mr. Bartels said, this has the capacity to set Ghana apart as one of the best destinations for trade and business. In the long run, “this will increase jobs and impact standard of living and government revenue positively” Mr Bartels explained.
Dr. Adomdza, the Founding Lead for the Ashesi D: Lab, which led the organization of the hackathon, applauded the participants and assured them that the organizing coalition will continue to support the teams until they launched successful ventures or projects on their solutions.
He asked incubators and funding community to get behind the Blockchain technology and the solution concepts the participants came up with.
Mr Cecil Nutakor, co-founder of the Blockchain Society in Ghana, urged the government and policy makers to consider supporting the blockchain technology initiatives, especially those focused on the supply chain systems.
He explained that such technologies had the potential to improve transparency and strengthen the procurement processes in Ghana.
Mr Nutakor observed that currently, the blockchain technology had attracted massive attention both in industry and in the academic sphere and said its application and potential had been lauded by paragon institutions like IBM and Maesrk.
He said IBM had for example developed blockchain systems that allowed it to digitize transaction workflow through a highly secured, shared and replicated ledger, adding that the company had emphasized the technology as one necessary for the optimization of supply and production processes.
Such testimonials, may have contributed to Facebook’s decision to explore the use of the blockchain technology in their model, Mr. Nutakor said.
He observed that in Africa, countries like Sierra Leone were leading the way in the application of blockchain, having recently adopted and adapted the technology in running their presidential and parliamentary elections.
Ghana, in the light of the Blockchain Hackathon 2018 program are hoping to explore the application of the technology in several different avenues, probably starting with the supply chain solutions, said Mr. Nutakor.
He observed that the response from the developer community to the hackathon showed that the prospects were high for seeing more applications in the next few years in different spheres of life, such as ID verification for government and other services, secured trust systems for all kinds of transaction platforms, seamless and reliable payment transactions, among others.
GNA
Source: GNA Story (http://www.ghananewsagency.org/social/blockchain-technology-gains-interest-in-ghana-132785) Published: 2018-05-17 17:57:17 © Ghana News Agency
CONTENT SERIES: IDEATION PROCESS
April 17, 2018
On 4th April 2017, Mary Lassey, class of 2021, a Business Administration student presented on the concept of ideation. Of course, if they are no ideas, design thinking process will be futile. Mary covered the methods of ideation in the design thinking process which are, brainstorming, Disney three rooms, triggered brain walking, semantic intuition, worst idea and the six thinking hats.
Under the six thinking hats, the presenter highlighted the significance of each hat in the process of ideation. She stated that the blue hat had to do with the processes taken to make ideation work, the white hat represented facts, the green hat could be associated with creativity, the red hat was symbolic of feelings, the yellow hat; benefits and the black hat was a representation of the measures put in place to be cautious of the ideas which are picked.
To make the presentation more down to earth, Mary elaborated on creativity, concepts, domain-relevant skills creativity relevant skills and intrinsic tax motivation. She reiterated that domain relevant skills as well as creativity relevant skills were factors that could affect an individual’s ideation process. This is because these skills are the facts and knowledge that affect an individual’s performance and one’s mental mindset respectively.
In the process of wrapping up, Mary stated that the importance of ideation cannot be overemphasised because even the worst idea approach, though crazy, sometimes yields the most excellent results in the end. Ideation, therefore, is vital toward the attainment of a workable solution in the design thinking process.
Story By Najahat Antiku
CONTENT SERIES: PROTOTYPING
April 17, 2018
Last time on the content series, we gave you a breakdown on ethnographic research tools, their benefits as well as the pitfalls they entail. During this session, we had a presentation by Alexis Yeboah, a first year student majoring in Business Administration, on prototyping. Young Alexis spoke about prototyping as the manufacture of a scaled down version of the product that a company wishes to usher to the public. He broke prototyping into 3 basic stages: Create it, Act it out and Portray it.
With creating the prototype, there is absolutely no problem in procuring the items needed to make it, seeing as they come at cheap prices. From what we observed in the presentation, a prototype of a backpack was made with cardboard paper which can be bought for less than 3 cedis in Ghana. The model of such a product can be useful in envisioning the final look of the product in question.
Role play is also a very essential step in prototyping. With this, members of a team or an organization can put themselves in the shoes of would-be customers, to see if their product has a shot of making it to the mainstream market. Here, in Ashesi, most students have gone through this process as groups in their Foundations Of Design and Entrepreneurship Classes. It has really helped them through the second part of the course which involves bringing their business to life.
Finally, there is the portrayal of the prototype. This is also referred to as the construction of a wireframe. A wireframe is an illustration showing basic elements of a product. As seen in various forms of media, business tycoons with ideas for facilities such as shopping malls or sports centers usually display wireframes based on them. It certainly aids customers in understanding just how the product functions. Alexis educated us more on prototypes by explaining the categories they come in. There are the low fidelity prototypes and the high-fidelity prototypes. With the low fidelity prototypes, there are minimal details to a product and they are far from their final forms. It aids more in visualizing the product than in functioning properly. But with high fidelity prototypes, we are able to see those details and they are more closer to the finished version of the product. An analogy from Alexis was based on movie trailers. Low fidelity prototypes are comparable to teaser trailers which are less than a minute, meaning less detailed and focuses on flashy scenes from the movie that would premiere in cinemas. But theatrical trailers best describe the high fidelity prototypes, because they give a little more in details than a mere teaser would.
Some benefits of a prototype include the fact that it gives customers power. Prototypes do come to life with aspects such as size or shape, in respect to the trends most customers are into. Clothing could be an example. Customers could be into specific styles of clothing which would get business owners to whip up a prototype based on that detail, to sum it up, customers’ preferences control the outcome of a prototype. Prototyping also allows you to sell your business. Prototypes serve as validation for a business’s hopes of thriving. If a scaled down version of a product is liked by a massive number of people, it certainly means that the business would soar. Feedback is also achieved. Would-be customers provide feedback based on the testing of a prototype. It is at times encouraging and at times it is not. Negative feedback is not necessarily “negative”. It is a chance or opportunity to improve upon the prototype to ensure its chances of acceptability. That is all for now on the Ashesi Design Lab Content Series, but do not blink, there is more excitement coming your way.
Story By Jude Ansah
FRAMING + RESEARCH TOOLS – OBSERVATIONS AND DEPTH INTERVIEW
April 4, 2018
This week in the Content Series, The Design Lab had its session on Ethnographic Research Tools. This was led by Libehela Lydia Kabi, a first year student studying Business Administration here in Ashesi University College. She defines ethnography as the study of people and cultures which reflects the knowledge and the systems of meanings in the lives of those cultural groups. Research tools on the other hand are defined as the necessary means for the collection of information. A scenario concerning transportation for Ashesi, laying out the need for a vehicle to transport students to areas beyond campus rather than dredge their feet all the in the scorching sun.
Libehela goes on to note three key ethnographic research tools that could be utilized to assess the situation at hand. These tools are observational shadowing, depth interviews and immersion. When we think of observational shadowing, we could see it as gathering information on a subjects in their natural habitat without any form of communication with them. She mentions the benefits of observational shadowing such as obtaining factual information. Factual information is obtained by just observing the subjects’ natural behavior in their habitats. When they’re undisturbed, you will obtain true details on the matter because if researchers do make the mistake of interrupting the subjects, they could go into a state of pretence, rendering your research useless.
She goes on to elaborate on depth interviews. A Depth interview is a one-on-one interaction between a researcher and the subject he or she is studying in order to explore their perspective on a case at hand. This research tool has its share of benefits as well. One of such benefits would be better rapport. Researchers can pay undivided attention to their research subjects as they express themselves with concerns to. This creates a more comfortable environment for the subjects who would no doubt provide the researcher with the necessary information that he or she needs pertaining to the issue. When conducting interviews, researchers must not get into the habit of asking questions that are double-barreled. An example of that would be “Who are you? Where did you come from? Who raised you?” This puts quite a lot of pressure on the subjects and it may cause them to back out of the interview. Another thing not to do would be to ask personal questions such as ones that have to do with their families. The main goal of a researcher is to gain insight on how subjects feel about the situation they are entrapped in, not dipping into their personal profiles.
Libehela finally mentions the method of immersion. Immersion is where the researcher dives into the situation itself rather than monitor it from a distance or simply asking about it. In relating this to her case scenario, a researcher could decide to join the struggling Ashesi students who have no mode of transportation off campus. He would walk with them all the way to the bus stop in town, all sweaty just like they are in wait for a taxi or a trotro. This could be termed as “Literal Empathy” because rather than imagine themselves in the place of the students, they would actually put themselves in that place. This is yet another fine research tool in getting to assess the situation on a deeper level, but it also might be disadvantageous in the sense that the researcher might forget the true purpose behind his choosing of this method to tackle the task. Ethnographic Research tools are useful in any project the Design Lab has underway and essential in capturing the goal of carrying them out, be they for the need of Ashesi students or the locals of Berekuso. The content series goes on, bringing more useful information on the awesome work in motion here at the design lab.
Story By Jude Ansah
CONTENT SERIES: HYDROPONICS IMPLEMENTATION (CROPS WITHOUT SOIL)
March 26, 2018
On Wednesday, the 21st of March, the D:Lab hosted another educative content series presentation. We had a presentation by Stefan Ofosuhene on his team’s project “Hydroponics” the method of growing plants without soil. He mentioned the use of alternatives such as gravel to grow plants, with a view on how technology causes more harm than good for the environment. But with his team, he strives to utilize technology to work totally for the benefit of society.
After the presentation, we made our way to the health kiosk with the Design Lab’s media division leader, Wayne Gakuo. We saw most of the projects underway. Team Hydroponics’ project was quite interesting. Hearing about what they were undertaking during the presentation made us interns curious about how they were going about it. We saw the utilization of pipes and bottles put together to make up a connected system whereby plants can grow with the help of their alternative agent, gravel. It will be interested to see what else unfolds as the remaining weeks of the Design Lab come into play.
HOW PARADIGM SHIFTS LEAD TO INNOVATION
February 23, 2018
This week’s content series featured Kelvin Degbotse, a junior here at Ashesi. Kelvin is the founder and CEO of Obsessive Innovations, a company which works with award winning visionaries and to help them create innovative technology products and also empowers youthful talent to be innovative. He spoke about how paradigm shifts lead to innovation.
“Paradigm shifts refers to fundamental changes in approach or underlying assumptions”. Kelvin, in an effort to explain this concept further, said that in order to create a paradigm shift one is supposed to think about two things, what exists and what you expect to exist. You then forget what already exists and focus on what you expect to exist. That, according to him is the difference between just selling and innovating. This is because when one sells, one is just supplying demand, but when one innovates, demand is created. He then gave examples of Amazon and Uber, who thought about their various markets in a different way, and are enjoy huge demands for their services. “When demand is created through innovation, then other competitors will supply your demand” was another statement he made.
After the demand is created through innovation, the innovator then has to create a team of like-minded individuals who share his or her passion buys into the vision. These attributes are important because, the beginning will be tough. And when the product is finally built, be market driven, and not product driven. So, embrace paradigm shifts and build for the market.
This has been another week of content series.
IS GHANA READY FOR THE BLOCK CHAIN TECHNOLOGY?
February 23, 2018
With the new technology that has heated global conversations for over a year now, where can we put our developing nations? Are we truly ready for the changing world? How can we also take a grip of this newly produced technology to solve a problem of problems?
On the 17th of February 2018, the Hackathon info-session was held at the premises of ISpace Foundation at Labone to discuss these important questions and how the nation can work together to solve their own problems. This is a response to the excessive dependence of citizens on government to solve all problems.
Block chain as defined by the authors of Block chain Revolution is “an incorruptible digital ledger of economic transactions that can be programmed to record not just financial transactions but virtually everything of value.” Basically, this technology keeps information as it is – the database is not stored at one single location which means that records kept will be actually public and easily confirmable.
Mr. Papa Kow Bartels, of the Ministry of Trade, geared the young minds in the Hackathon teams to learn how to move ahead than the government. It is their role now to use the block chain technology to help the government solve their 10 goals.
There are several problems including poverty, food security, and human settlement, addressing enterprise development, education sectors and several others that can be solved with the use of technology. Mr. Bartels enforced on the local experts finding bankable solutions that can help the government in solving these problems.
The structure of industries in Ghana is highly dominated by services (83%) of which retail and wholesale champion with 53%. It is saddening that agriculture which is the backbone of the Ghanaian economy has remained history and currently non-existing in the structure of industries. The remaining 17% is made up of small scale industries such as the corn milling industry and several others.
It came as a shock to the whole Hackathon teams that several enterprises that are responsible for electrical supply are non-existing in the Ghanaian industry. This rings an alarm for several young Hackathon members to start brainstorming on how they can steer up Ghana’s industrial technology through the use of the currently induced block chain technology.
This new technology has been made available to everyone. Thus, it is our responsibility to solve a lot of our problems using block chain technologies and in order to better the country.
By Maureen Molly Basemera and Pearl Abbam
STORYBOARDING AS A WAY OF PRESENTING NEW IDEAS IN DT APPLICATION
February 12, 2018
The Ashesi Dlab is back and this week it hosted the first content series of the semester. In continuing with last semester’s format, it was done in a YouTube style presentation. It took place on the 7th of February 2018. The presenter was Tamisha Segbefia.
Tamisha is a freshman at Ashesi University College and a CS major. Over the past few months here at Ashesi, she has been very fascinated by the design thinking process and has been employing it more, even when planning her day. “Thanks to the introduction of Design Thinking in FDE, I’ve found it easier to analyze problems and fully understand how to put all of my ideas on paper, organized or not,” she said. Tamisha hopes to grow her knowledge in design thinking and share with others who haven’t been exposed to the concept.
Tamisha was introduced to Story-boarding in her F.D.E class, and she found it a very useful tool in solving problems much more easily than conventional methods of writing them down. A storyboard creates a narrative that focuses on people and their actions. It communicates ideas using visual representations. These presentations allow for easy mapping of problems and their solutions.
She mentioned some importance of story-boarding. The first of which was that it helps to visualize people’s behavior to fully understand an individual. The second was that it helps manufacturers view their process much faster and in an easier manner. She also touched on some steps she found useful while drawing a story-board:
Write out the story that you want to tell
Use a large paper sheet first to draw to allow for all team members to have a chance to input
Drafts do not have to be perfect drawings
Use colors to make key elements stand out
Story-boarding has some advantages over other methods of finding solutions and Tamisha mentioned a few. Firstly, the story-boarding process is cheap, one does not need expensive materials to carry it out, a large sheet of paper and some colored pens are all that is needed. Secondly, this method encourages teamwork as it allows all teammates to pitch in. Thirdly, the inclusion of pictures makes this method easy to understand. Finally, since story-boarding does not require expert drawing skills, it is easy to do.
Story-boarding is a very interesting concept and thanks to Tamisha for her time and her illuminating presentation. Join us throughout the semester as we continue to explore design thinking.
Find below the video for the presentation:
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