Agence Future Travel log 3.10: Africa - Kumasi
As soon as we passed the border from Burkina Faso into Ghana, the landscape changed colour from dull beige to bright green. Where Burkina Faso had looked dead dry, only shallow poodles being left of lakes near Ouhayigouya, Ghana looked healthy. Irrigation is doing the trick here.
We spent Bob Marley commemoration night in Bolgatanga and then went on in a hurry to reach Kumasi before International Telecommunications Day about which we saw the minister of communications of Ghana give a speech some days earlier in Tamale.
On the day itself, I went to the Computer Science Department of the Nkruhma Nkwame University of Science and Technology.
I spoke with the head of department, a young lecturer and an older professor who taught database management and who had been around in the early days of the department in the seventies.
They had much faith in the development potential of ICT but to questions about the dangers and pitfalls they answered only from the point of view of content. "Perhaps there will be much of the things we do not want to see. Like television perhaps, it does not only show what is good for the people."
In Kumasi, I also went to KITE, a local NGO concerned with technology and development. Here, projects that estimate the impact of a national electricity grid and projects that encourage the use of renewable energy are supported by a professional and well organised team.
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