The 56th Annual General Meeting and Conference of the Ghana Institution of Engineers (GhIE) is underway in Ho, Volta Region.
About 700 engineering practitioners, policymakers, industry leaders, researchers, and development partners are attending the three-day conference on the theme: “Engineering the food security and sustainable agriculture value chain.”
Among the participants are representatives of engineering associations from Kenya, Sierra Leone, Liberia, South Africa and Nigeria.
The conference is aimed at exploring how innovative engineering solutions can help achieve food security goals within a resilient and sustainable agricultural and business ecosystem.
The President of GhIE, Professor Ludwig Annang Hesse, said engineering was not only about building bridges and systems, but also about building nations and laying paths for future generations.
He, therefore, urged members to come up with innovative solutions, such as helping societies move from where they were to where they must be.
Alternative transportation
The Presidential Advisor on the 24-Hour Economy and Accelerated Export Development, Augustus Goosie Tanoh, said the country was losing massive fortunes due to over-dependence on road transport.
The cost was evident in lives lost in road crashes, in the enormous expenses of building and maintaining road networks, and the economic burden of moving goods exclusively by road, he said.
Mr Tanoh said diversifying transport modes was an engineering imperative, adding that inland water transport on the Volta Lake, for instance, could reduce logistics costs by more than 40 per cent while easing pressure on roads and people’s movement.
He said the 24-Hour Economy programme was already working to create that environment and gave an assurance that the government would push for procurement frameworks that rewarded technical capability as well as financial guarantees.
Imports
Mr Tanoh said the nation imported more than $2 billion in machinery annually and insisted “that value chain must stay here.”
He said engineering education must also evolve with the market, so that graduates see their future in solving problems and building systems.
Mr Tanoh commended the GhIE for its commitment to nation-building, saying for 56 years it had set the benchmark for how engineering was practised in the country.
“With thousands of registered members spanning civil, mechanical, electrical, chemical, mining, agricultural, and computing disciplines, you are the largest concentration of technical problem-solvers in the country,” he added.
Further, Mr Tanoh said, the institution’s mission to promote the advancement of engineering for the benefit of society was ultimately a mission to design, build, and optimise the systems that made a country work.
Transformation
In a speech read on his behalf earlier, the Minister of Works, Housing and Water Resources, Kenneth Gilbert Adjei, said: “At a time when climate variability, global disruptions, and demographic pressures threaten our ability to feed ourselves sustainably, Ghana must look to engineering leadership to transform and safeguard our agricultural future.”
He said overcoming challenges required engineered, system-level solutions embedded in the context of national frameworks, and not just policy statements.
For his part, the Ho Municipal Chief Executive, Stephen Adom, said engineering played a crucial role in transforming agriculture through irrigation systems, mechanisation, storage facilities, agro-processing, and efficient transportation networks.
Source:
www.graphic.com.gh