A Country Without Innovation

Innovation can simply be stated as the creation of a process, service or a product that is new to an organization. It is the introduction of new ways of doing things that brings much value and improvements especially in the areas of client/customer satisfaction. Innovation has long been recognize as a key step if not the only to building strong institutions that can provide quality and efficient service that push out the frontiers of socio-economic development. An innovation do not have to be new to the world; rather it should be viewed as a fresh and first idea within an organization, whether or not the idea has been adopted or used by other organizations. It may simply be a change in an organizational practice which improves productivity. It is a task sui generic, a feat not of intellect but of will. Just by using existing technologies to create a new improve process can amount to an innovation.

Innovation and national development have a direct link. Without constant innovation, national institutions will stagnate and drag to obsolesce. Constant Innovation can strengthen our institutions to perform the all important roles of delivering the fruits of development. No country the world over has been able to develop or even show a semblance of development without innovation. As a matter of fact the weakness and languor that have come to enveloped public institutions in Ghana clearly exposes the near absence of innovation in the public sector.

It is however prudent to note that Ghana's governments, past and present have recognized the role of innovation in transforming the economy, reducing poverty and delivering quality public services. This recognition is reflected in various political and policy statements of governments. I can mention the Ghana ICT for accelerated Development (ICT4AD) policy of 2003, Vision 2020 and the new Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation as classical cases showing Ghana's recognition of the essentiality of innovation. Yet where are the innovations?

In our hospitals we still use the very practices that are typical of the pre-independence era. A sick person must join a long queue to check blood pressure, another long queue to get health insurance documentations and finally join a chameleon moving queue to see a doctor. In fact the paper work and the large files are enough frustrations in themselves. Yet there is no process innovation to shorten these processes for all these donkey years.

The situation is not very different in the field of education. In some cases there is even some retrogression. There used to be schools in our Regional capitals that had well equipped laboratories and modernized Teaching and learning materials (TLMs) in the 1960s. Today the same schools have nothing not even a litmus paper. Yet we have a policy to encourage the teaching and learning of science when laboratories are disappearing.

The inertia to innovate has caught up with the Ghanaian private sector to some extent. This actually explains the diminution of private business activities in the country with lack of expansion, falling profit margins and job dissipation as a consequence. To illustrate this private sector inertia I wish to refer to a company that produces the most common pen in Ghana "BIG pen". For over two decades or even more the company has not added even a minutest innovation to it. So we keep having the same thing in generations.

As a matter of agency, Ghana needs to reform the nature, operations and delivery of public services. Sometimes it is only about changing administrative procedures to pave way for efficiency and timely delivery.

To end this piece, I wish to call on the leadership of public institutions in this country to consider finding out pragmatic means of altering the contours of administrative maps of the country in ways that can enhance efficiency and timely delivery of service. Information communications Technologies (ICTs) can be helpful in this regard.

By

Alabani, Kassim B. A (Tamale), M.Sc. (Cape Coast)

P O Box 5 Bisco - TL, Tamale,

Email: kassimalabani@yahoo.com

Tel: + 233 207352420