Ghanaian universities to benefit from $10m ESRI support

Ghanaian universities have been selected among 100 across Africa to benefit from a $10­ million assistance from the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI), the world’s leading Geographic Information Systems (GIS) developer.

The support will enable the universities to inte­grate GIS into their functions and tuition in most departments to enhance teaching and learning. It will also help them to capture young minds and get them to embrace geography and the culture of sharing.

GIS has reached all advanced stage. The sys­tem could be used to solve virtually every devel­opment challenge, which would enable lecturers in Ghana and students to contribute to high level research in the geo-spatial systems revolution that is currently engulfing the world.

ESRI’s Corporate Director of International Operations, Mr Dean Angelides, announced the 100 Universities Initiative when he visited Ghana last week.

He explained that the initiative would take the form of deploying ESRI GIS technology applica­tions in the educational institutions, teaching the lecturers how to use the applications while the lec­turers would impart the knowledge and whip up interest in their students to embrace the GIS sys­tem for solving everyday problems.

“Students will also be able to contribute to ongoing research into GIS, with special emphasis on how to develop applications to solve Ghana’s unique challenges,” he told an assembly of vice chancellors of universities in Ghana, heads of edu­cational institutions, directors of ministries, department and agencies as well as business exec­utives.

He said for more than 30 years, the ESRI had led the research that had developed various GIS applications as a solution for almost every aspect of human endeavour and development challenge including solving sanitation and environmental challenges, controlling floods and natural disas­ters, improving governance in countries and enhancing the sharing of data.

Mr Angelides said that the support for the uni­versities could go beyond an initial $10 million amount when the actual programme takes off.

The ESRI West African representatives, Sambus Company Ltd, which had been mandated to come out with modalities for selecting the schools, said the programme was ready to start next academic year and all the universities had to do was to show interest of participation through a written application to be considered.

The Chief Executive of Sambus, Mr Samuel Aboah, said the initiative was one of many in the past that the company had partnered universities and other educational institutions in the country to implement.

Source: Daily Graphic