CoE Interviewer
Could you please introduce yourself with your name and then some background?
Guest Alumnus:
My name is Ing. Dr. Kenneth Ashigbey. I am the Chief Executive of the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications. I attended KNUST in 1991. I think I bought two forms: one for the Electrical Engineering programme and the other for Mechanical Engineering. However, I gained admission into the Mechanical Engineering programme. So, I was in the Mechanical Engineering class for my first year. Within that first year though, I was able to make the required grades which allowed me to change my programme of study in the second year to Electrical Engineering, which was the preferred course. I majored in Telecommunication engineering but my final year project was in building services which is a section under power. So, you can say that in the College, I tried to juggle quite some interesting combination of subject areas. My final year project was in building technologies for two hundred services on a hotel complex.
During my schooling at KNUST, my batch was not fortunate to stay in school for four years. We should have completed our programme in 1995 but due to a year’s break as a result of industrial action embarked on by UTAG, our stay on campus was extended by a year leading to my batch graduating in 1996. I was officially assigned to University Hall (Katanga) but ended up being the Hall President of Queens Hall. Switching of Halls came in when on arrival at Katanga, there were no available bed spaces so I was forced to perch with friends in the Hall. Queens Hall had a Cadet Corps - The Royal Cadet Corps. My senior at St Augustine College, Asafo Adjei, whom we used to call Aso, was the Commander in his third year. He convinced me to move to Queens Hall so that I could be his 2IC and then take over from him when he left. So, in third year, I was appointed the President of the Royal King Cadet Corps. In my final year, I was elected the Hall President while doubling as the Commander of the Royal Cadet Corps. During that year’s Hall Week celebration, I gave both the Hall President and the Cadet Commander’s speeches. I’m not sure anybody has broken that record yet.
CoE Interviewer
How were you able to combine academics and these two political positions?
Guest Alumnus:
Well, the interesting thing was that I was the judicial committee Chairperson of the SRC as well. So I was a complete student, and I think that I have not regretted that, seeing as it was one of the distinctions of The School of Engineering, now called the College of Engineering. You find out that it encourages us to go through the school and let the school go through us. You will learn hard, you will play hard, you will do other things as well. It was a tough game combining them (academics and extracurricular activities) so our lectures were packed; and then you had all these other responsibilities to shoulder. But fortunately, we got Lecturers who told us that life after University was not just about education, and there was a lot of talk about the application of the knowledge that we used. There was also talk about working together in teams—so extracurricular activities were not frowned upon. We were not one of the Schools or the Colleges that said, “you, instead of learning you are doing this and that”. Our Lecturers would not frown upon you doing other stuff as well. It was difficult, but you know, we pushed on and for me, some would say it affected my academics because I started off with first class or second class upper, and then dropped. I could not hold it but still finished with a second class.
CoE Interviewer
Can you please recall anything that you learnt as an undergraduate and if you did your masters at KNUST?
Guest Alumnus:
No, I did not do my masters at KNUST. I didn’t do my doctorate at KNUST either. I went to the Swiss Management Center for my masters and did my doctorate in Leister University in the UK.
As mentioned earlier I was very much involved in student politics and all these issues about demonstrations and “alluta” that were affecting the calender. I was also very vocal, you know, and sometimes you know, leadership in the Universities are not able to stand that—So just after I finished my first degree, I said no, no, I was not going to do it (another degree) in Ghana. But now I’m back in Legon doing MA in Law and I keep romanticizing some postgraduate degree in Engineering so you never can tell what will happen.
CoE Interviewer
Oh, okay. So your master’s degree was not in Engineering?
Guest Alumnus:
No, no. It was in finance. Once I got done with school…see, earlier I told you about the fact that I had majored in telecommunications. My project was in Building Services Engineering for a 200-bed-hotel, and my supervisor was Mr. Opuni. We did a very short National Service, just three months because of the fact that we stayed home for one year. So, I saw an application for a Project Engineer for an electrical engineering firm and I applied – Fanel Ltd. I went for the interview and I was picked. I became a Building Service Engineer, a Project Engineer but in a construction field. Then I realized that, when we were in school it was the “shark” boys who would read Engineering, who would read medicine and all of that; but some would read accounting. Maybe some of them would be sharp and go and read administration. You know the accounting people and all of that, they rise to the top, And this is not fair, I thought to myself. So I said, “okay, what would I do to also break the Chief Engineer or the Chief Director Technical or Technology Officer role and also become CEO?” So the only thing I thought of was to pursue an MBA, so I did so in finance.
You remember you asked about some of the skills I got back in the university?
The engineering programme makes you very analytical. It makes you think critically; it makes you focus on solving problems. So, it gave me the critical thinking, problem-solving skills and made me very innovative. So, you know, when you start doing the differentiation and the integrations, which you have already been prepared for, and you get into the world of finance, yeah, you got to do a good job at it. You know there is lot of research that say: Engineers make the best leaders, and I think a fact about the underdevelopment of Ghana is that, we don’t have too many Engineers in politics and in the leadership of our country - and that has to change. This is one of my missions now, to get young engineers into politics to rise up to the top.
So my second degree was not in Engineering because I wanted to get to the very top. I realized that even in the building environment, you have the architect, you have civil engineers, you have quantity surveyors before you have the “engineers”. When it comes to sharing the money, the architect will take the lion share, then the civil, then the quantity surveyors and then some peanuts will be given to share among the mechanical people. I looked at that and I thought that was also not right. I asked myself what I could do to be the Project Lead - you know, to lead the Project Team. So that’s why I did not read engineering. As a result, I did a postgraduate in Project Management. I certified as a Project Management professional so that I could lead projects. And then for my doctorate I looked at what some of the challenges were when I was the managing director of Graphics, Corporate Government, State Owned Institutions, and I figured, let me do a doctorate in Corporate Government and all of that. Again, engineering comes in with problem solving, and you know there are challenges of corporate governance in our country. So I thought to myself, let me find out what these challenges involve and then I wrote my thesis on Corporate Governance and Performance in State Owned Enterprises taking Graphics as a case study. So, you see? The engineer in me sees a problem, tries to figure out what can be done to solve it - what kind of education solves it.
CoE Interviewer:
So, that means you didn’t continue with Engineering after your undergraduate studies and you didn’t really work with it?
Guest Alumnus:
So in terms of work as I said, I worked as a Project Engineer and so when I got my MBA, I was still doing my project. Then I left Fanel and went to Joy FM (in January 2000) as the Chief Technology Officer for radio, all the multi-media radio. Then, it was Joy FM, Adom FM and Love FM - setting some of the stations up and then providing engineering support for them. Then I was called by the Chief Executive of Multi-Media in April 2000 to see whether I would want to be General Manager of Joy FM. That then pulled me into management. I held onto the engineering for a while, doubling until I got one of my prodigies who is also from KNUST, Patrick Ayivor, to take over from me as CTO.
Media management then took my head off, but I was still running my company. So I had a company called Multi Task that also was a building services engineering firm. So I was running that and then I had a partnership with one of my mates back in KNUST, Joseph Ngwar, running a Building Service Consultancy firm. He was then leaving to the US to further his education so I held the fort for him, running all of its affairs. Till date I’m a partner in that firm. I own 50% of that firm, and you know, they run a lot of the day to day activities but I still sit on the Board. I do Engineering on that front. Then with my media experience at Joy FM I left to Liberia for a while, came back and came to work at Metro TV, running Marketing this time. Then I came back to Multi Media to be Chief Technology Officer of Multi TV. Then I went to Graphic as Managing Director of Graphics. At Graphics as well, I dealt with the printing presses. So, in all the places I’ve worked because of my engineering background, though I’m in leadership position leading the organization, I still pay attention to the engineering.
So, through engineering, I became interested in IT as well because I mastered in Telecommunications. I majored in Telecom Engineering. So I would do in Graphics for example, the technology running of the press, they introduce new technologies like QR-code where you are able to embed videos and audios into the newspaper, building graphics websites and all of that. So, though I had left engineering full time and I was in leadership, I still would use my engineering, project management, to do the things I did. Now I have come back to telecommunications as the Ghana Chamber for Telecommunications CEO, so I deal with a lot of advocacy but you need to understand engineering to be able to advocate for it, to be able to push for regulation, to be able to push for policy. So when you are having conversation around 5G, you know you are looking at the issues of latency and all of that, you know you need to understand it. So I keep on using my engineering.
CoE Interviewer:
Is there anything or are there any particular projects you are particularly proud of?
Guest Alumnus:
Yes, quite a lot of them. When I got out of school and I went to work at Fanel, the interesting thing was that I got the opportunity to work with an alumnus of KNUST, Mr. Jangma - great Electrical Engineer, had worked at ECG and was now a contractor. So we actually were applying what I had done in my thesis at work. I also worked with SAGES. SAGES had a lot of KNUST trained Electrical Engineers from the late Mr. Acheampong – great great Electrical Engineer, to Mr. Sam. Mr. Sam was also Electrical, Mr. Agyabeng was mechanical. All of those, the cohort and sages, they were all from KNUST. They were also consultants on one of the projects. and then behind British Counsel in Accra there was this multi-storey building that was done by Taysec and so I went to that project from ground zero as the Project Engineer. The Managing Director of Fanel just thrust me in there and said, “this is your project. Go and handle it.” It was really baptism of fire. So I did a lot of those projects. I worked on that project doing the building services for that.
Then also, there is a pyramid building opposite SSNIT Pension House that I worked on from the ground to the top. When I was leaving, one of the other building services project that we did was a Latter Saint Day project that is around the MTN Head Office on that main road and the good thing about that project was the fact that this was a cost plus project. Teysec were the main contractors and then Fanel was the nominated electrical services contractor, and because it was cost plus, cost was not the problem. It was technology-based so you could then really apply the theories that you had learned, you know? When it came to the quality of cabling, the size of cabling, regulation, the sizing of your transformers, it came to the issues of fire protection, everything, you were not limited. We were really applying Engineering and you know, you needed to test rigorously and so it was where theory and practice had come to meet completely. Then you were not limited by the issues of cost, and that was also one of the great highs that I left on. In the process I also became a Fire Alarm Commissioning Engineer and I worked on some very, very interesting fire alarm projects. All of these projects I talked about, we worked on them. Then also, another was the old airport building - having to go and commission the fire alarm installation there.
CoE Interviewer:
These fire alarm technologies, were they innovations of yours or existing technology?
Guest Alumnus:
So basically, these were existing technologies. The only thing about them is that being a constructor, it was the applications of them - being able to use these innovative cutting-edge technologies. Before then very few people were using addressable systems, so we started introducing these addressable systems where you could actually address and pinpoint where the fire was, with them the opportunity to even remotely monitor them. But then in the consultancy field for example, one of the big projects we worked on was the hostels that Legon built. They built these big hostels and we were the electrical consultants on that project. The buildings opposite the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research - really big massive three or four hostels.
So, the skill of it, the numbers of students that were going to be in there, being able to apply engineering, being able to size transformers, made sure that you were able to forecast the load but still be economical. So, the experience taught optimization. That was also some great engineering work that went into that and making sure that we were supervising the contractors to be able to deliver up to specifications. So some of the innovations that we also brought about especially when we were doing our contracting, was the ability to be able to take knowledge out of old projects to be able predict new ones that you are going to do. So, you’ve done your project, you have your bill of quantities, and you have cost. By the time you finish it, there might be some changes. However, because you have done work for 200, maybe a thousand- meter square project, a fourteen storey, sixteen storey and you were given another one to do, you were able to take the learnings out of that to be able to predict to great certainty what is going to happen in subsequent projects. So, my experience in working as a contractor helped me in working as a consultant so that when I do a design for a contractor to work with, I am able to predict to almost 100% certainties and then optimize on cost. So, you then avoid these issues of variations coming into it.
Another thing about working with teams for example is one of the architects we worked with was also able to visualize the end of the building from the design stage. Back then we did not have all these 3D computers that you could model and walk through your buildings, but you still needed to do something reasonable, such that you are as precise as can be. A lot of engineers will not do working drawings, they would just do straight drawings, but we did working drawings where you were able to provide a lot of details. So, there was a lot of modelling that we did even in the building services either as a contractor or as a consultant.
CoE Interviewer:
Could I please ask if all these things you did, referring to the innovations, the fire alarms, were all these knowledge repositories you had from your first degree?
Guest Alumnus:
Completely, so for me my help was the project I did—working on the two hundred storey hotel building. There is a theory that you were taught - how to calculate the sizes of your cables in terms of providing these security systems. So, if you got into the field and you also were exposed to some of these consultants who were also from KNUST faculty as well, there, you always had to bring the theory you had learnt to the practice, and then your practice was validated by the theory. You pick new skills, but the foundation was built on that (theory learnt). We also had Lecturers like Professor Annan. He taught us power generation and supply (PGS). He would give open book live examples where he took challenges in Industry and gave them to us to solve. So, the issues of the sizing of your transformers, in terms of our network, the sags that would have to go when we’re designing high tension networks and all of that. He made us see that already. So, we were able to immediately, when confronted with challenges, bring the practice and the theory together to solve our problems. So, for me, what we learnt through the four years and especially what I did on PGS 1, 2, 3 and 4 Courses as well as my thesis allowed me to apply it. It was the reason why I’m pretty sure I was happy to stay in the building services.
CoE Interviewer:
So apart from your thesis where I guess you had some practical knowledge, did you ever intern or get the opportunity to work, practice, while you were still in school?
Guest Alumnus:
Yes, so you know we have internships that we do, and one of the internships I did was with P&T, known as Ghana Telecom then. So, I remember the engineers who impacted on me, Engineer Devine Kpetigo—he was also a KNUST trained engineer. This was our first or second-year internship. We went there and then he put two of us (Bonsu Bruce and I) on a project to investigate the causes of cross-stock, using two of the Accra-north exchange and Accra- central exchange. We needed to investigate it, take the theories, some of which we had not event learnt, go and research and write a paper for him. So the internship was very practical. Then I also got an opportunity to do some vacation work with another KNUST contractor – Sokpoli.
When I went intern there I asked him not to disclose my status as an engineering student. I was assumed an apprentice, and I did all the chiseling and such “odd” jobs. I was almost through with my internship when he came around and I was chiseling, and he was so upset. But what it did for me was that it helped my seniors there open up and teach me a lot of the practice, and then I was able to marry my theory with that. It also helped me with managing teams. When I left school and I came to work, I remember also doing internship at Ghana Ports and Harbor Authority. For all these internships when you come back, you have to write reports, and when you write the report you would be asked what you learnt and if you were able to apply what you learnt.
I remember when we went to GPHA, I had the opportunity of seeing tarristers and some of the modern cranes that were bought. I remember on one of our trips we had to climb one of their tall masts and change the lights – at that moment I thought I was going to die. The gentleman I went with was climbing after me to make sure I kept going up, and whenever I stopped, he’d ask me to keep going. So, I get to the top and the mast is swinging, but I’m wearing a harness; and from the top I see the huge ships I saw from below looking very small. Some of the things we were learning, like power generation and supply, we were able to use at Ghana Ports and Harbor, too.
CoE Interviewer:
I would like to go back to where you spoke about your internship and said you deliberately asked not to be revealed as an engineering student, because you knew it would set some form of a barrier between you and the people there. In that, at least, they would open up and show you a lot of things. What then, in this regard, would be your advice, because that is one problem we are having right now? We are told that some of our students are not willing to learn to do just about anything. They just want to come in and go straight to what they think is relevant to be assessed. They don’t understand how they can marry running errands with practical knowledge.
Guest Alumnus:
So, two big things: the first one is the fact that you need, as an engineering student, or a fresh engineering graduate, to realize that your first degree gives you all the basic skills of being able to be questioning, critical, curious, and gives you some theoretical base. But you will need to be humble to the fact that you are coming into work and there are some of the practical things that you don’t know, so that you are able to learn. So, there is that humility that you need. You need to sharpen that curiosity that will want to say I want to take a lot of knowledge here. The difference between an engineer and a technician is that the engineer is able to use knowledge to solve new problems that would come. The technician knows how to solve the problem. So, you also will need to go to some of these technicians to be able to learn some of the things that they have imbibed from experience, things they have been doing historically. So, if you don’t come with that humility and willingness to get your hands dirty, you'll learn nothing. You ought to be open enough to let them see that they’re teaching you, but then also get an opportunity to be able to validate some of the things they are doing that are right. Or being able to use theory to solve some of the problems.
Let me give you a typical example of that. So this is me: we’re going to install a generator for one of those periods where we had “dumsor”, and MTHC bought a generator from us and we needed to go and install it. So you get a crane, you move the generator to site. You get your cable, you get your automatic change over you have to fix, you connect the cable, so you know, the technicians…they’ve done all that under your supervision. Then it comes to commissioning the generator with the automatic change over and they tell you, “engineer, now, we technicians have finished our work, it’s left with engineering.”
You look at the manuals, you connect all the systems, you put the generator on, then the generator comes on and it goes off. It happens repeatedly. Fortunately, this happened around midday, so I tell them to let us go for lunch. Then I took my phone and I called one of my senior engineers who I had met, who also was from KNUST. Then I tell him this is the problem I’m solving, and he tells me to read the manuals. Then he tells me to read the voltages, then he asks me to go back and read the manual and see what the preset level at which the generator is supposed to come in. What is the preset level at which ECG is supposed to pick? I realize that what was happening was that ECG was on, but the voltage was fluctuating, so the preset levels that had been set was not good enough. Then he asked me to go and read the manual, relook at the way the calibrations had been done so I can change the preset levels. So, I read it and I do it. The thing works! So, I also went for lunch, and when we got back I asked for the manual. I had them read the manual and then I gave them instructions and asked them to turn the machine on. It came on and they clapped. This wasn’t something I had done. I had gone to somebody for help, but because of my training – he gave me the knowledge and I was able to apply.
So, if you as an engineering student are not humble enough to say, “let me also reach out to people who know”, I would fail. Note, this wasn’t reaching out to those who were working under me, it was reaching out to someone who was senior but who had also been in the field.
So, you need the humility to be able to learn from those who are under you. You also need the humility to realize that it is strength to be able to ask for help. It is important that our young engineers coming up know that. Then the second bit about it is getting your hands dirty and also doing apprenticeship, and volunteering. It is unfortunate that today’s graduates want to be driving in SUVs because they see you driving in one.
I learnt how to chisel, I learnt how do terminations on generators and transformers. I can climb a pole, do stringing, it does not belittle me. It just makes sure that when I send people to work, I know the number of cables to give them. They can’t fool me, and when I sit in the office and they’re describing what they have done for me; I actually can visualize it.
It is important that our young graduates learn humility, learn to be willing to get dirty, and are willing to start small.
CoE Interviewer:
I would like to ask in light of this advice to engineers, apart from the summer school where you served as a resource person, if you have been involved with alumni activities at the College level?
Guest Alumnus:
The School is what made me. Without KNUST, I would not be where I am today. So, not only did the college of engineering build us, I also got the opportunities of serving the school. I also did internships because the School gave me opportunities, so I give back to the school. Currently I am the Board Chairman for the KNUST media board. It brings together Focus FM and Tech TV. The billboards, the displays all over campus are as a result of the decisions made by the Board. I’m on the Board with Samuel Arthur who is also an Alumnus. I’m also part of the team that plans and is still planning the 70th anniversary. We are currently working on an Alumni book, a book on impact as well. So I do that, and periodically if there is something to be done and I’m called on, I adhere to it. With the day of giving for example, I took it upon myself to encourage my classmates and everybody to join. I encourage those in school that they should be thinking about how to help after they are done with school. So, I would encourage all the alumni to come back and give back to the school that helped us. We just have to find ways and means to give back to the school that has made us.
The interesting thing is that the more accolades the school wins, the better a position it puts us as alumni. The school gains global recognition so when you present your CV, your school is known, which directly impacts on you. I believe giving is spiritual, so when you give you are rewarded, not necessarily in heaven but right here on earth. The blessings might however not be in cash. It’s really important to give back to our school and especially, back to the College. The last time I came for the summer school, the Provost took me to the AI lab, for example. There are very interesting things going on in that space and I am talking with some of the CEOs of our members to see how to partner. So yes, giving back to the school is very important.
CoE Interviewer:
So I would like to ask if you have any thoughts you would want to share, or ideas you think we should implement or some things you think we must do at the College of Engineering to foster progress.
Guest Alumnus:
I think one of the things that we definitely need to do is model short courses for those practicing engineers that don’t require their presence in the school. KNUST can offer them a post-degree certificate in a particular course—in any of the engineering areas, telecommunication, etc. 5G is coming, AI is coming—can we offer some top-up courses? The College should invest in the right virtual labs and virtual classrooms. The learning has to be experiential. Focus shouldn’t only be on students doing four-year courses. However, it can be done for some long courses that run for one year or two years.
Potential students don’t have to be only in Ghana, it should be global. The Faculty is already in existence, you should be sweating the asset. Unfortunately, our country is developing in a “kwashiorkor” way with everything happening in Accra. How do we find a way of bringing KNUST to Accra, both physically and virtually so that it makes it easy for professionals that are in Accra to come to campus? Definitely, it's by using technology to do blended learning—that is going to be really important. Another thing is to get our Lecturers to do placement so they can become consultants in waiting in any of the Industries.
In the same way we can also get some experts in the industries becoming consultants in waiting for the schools. That exchange will have to happen. and then how the private sector, industry and KNUST come together. Then, for example, they go together to the government and say, “This particular challenge that exists, we want to find ways of solving a problem for you.” So, the money the government would give to a consultancy firm, the government would give it to us to solve problems for them. Then we can also come back with new solutions. It would give the university some money, and it would also give industries something marginal.
Another thing that we need to do (because I saw this on my recent visit, and also because I come from a building services engineering background) is to use projects on campus as learning labs for our students to say, “this is how it ought to be done.” We also have to make sure that the right things are done so that they use the live things that are happening on campus as a crucible to learn. The standards that we teach cannot be lowered! One of the projects I wouldn’t mind working with any of the undergraduate electrical engineering students on, is how to redesign the electrical services at the Engineering Guest house. When you do that, you bring faculty together, students together and industries also together then you take a project that the University is going to spend money to execute and use that as an opportunity for learning. You use that to make sure that the right things are done on campus. So, we can use those as benchmarks. You then can bring the minister for any of these sectors and say “this is what we have been able to do. We can replicate this in the world.”
As a college, there are a lot more partnerships we need to do with the Alumni and we need to involve them a lot in what we do.
CoE Interviewer:
So, as you spoke about involving them, you said “undergraduate students", I just want to be sure you didn’t mean postgraduate students.
Guest Alumnus:
The one for the building services for example was an undergraduate student. We could use post graduate students because when I went to the AI lab for example, some of the PhD students were doing projects on electrical engineering, assessing loads and all of that. I told them we could also use that for telecommunication. That’s a PhD project and could bring a partnership between industry and academia. So, it can be at different levels, masters level, PhD level, undergraduate level, depending on the problems you want to solve.
CoE Interviewer:
A follow up on what you were saying—you said alumni should be involved at these points, so how do we reach out to the alumni? You know we’re trying to gather a database and that’s already proving not so easy, so how do we reach out to willing alumni?
Guest Alumnus:
So, I think that we need to do a lot more in terms of the push, but we need to find advocates. So, once you get these advocates, you give them a task to bring on board five Alumni and then we get those five something to do. Get them one particular thing to do. Then these five too will each bring five alumni. This means I’m bringing five too, and one of them is Selorm, head of MTN. Then we should reach out to those who are leaving. Let’s make sure that the experience they leave school with is good, so that when they go they will look back to you.
Then another thing is that when we engage the alumni, let’s make sure whatever is needed to be done is easy to do. It shouldn’t be a chore, so we need to use technology. It should not be just an email, maybe there’s a platform that they all can get onto, and there’s a dashboard that can be seen which will use technology to remind them of things that they have to do. We have to also constantly look at what is in it for them. So, for instance, there is a place that their names will come up to say that these are the alumni that have done so and so – there’s a price for everybody.
CoE Interviewer:
So on a much lighter note, do you have any fun memories you would want to share? You spoke about being part of the SRC, Cadet Corps, and the President of Queens Hall. Is there anything?
Guest Alumnus:
Very interesting things to share. There are so many, so let me give you one typical example. When I was Hall President, one of the challenges we had was a pageant, Mr. University. This is me deciding that for me, equity was going to be important. So, you are not going to do Mr. University and say you want someone from Queens to win it. So the persons who wins is from Katanga Hall, and now you have to go and find a ticket for him to go to London. You have to go to Ghana Airways to get a ticket, and man, it was not an easy job. Very, very trying times but finally, we got that done.
There were very interesting days, the “alluta” things. I was very much involved in student politics. So when we were on strike, I was still on campus. While I was on campus, and because we were in engineering, especially the electrical engineering and were using the computer, I got to learn Excel. So whilst we were on strike and people where at home, I got an opportunity to go to Flash Photos and go to build excel for them do his accounts. Every evening, I would go and take their data, and all of this, I learnt it from the computer lab in engineering. My company Multi-task was formed when I finished school. A friend of my said Department of Urban Roads were looking for Excel, Access and PowerPoint. So I had the software and I went to install it for them. Then they wrote and they said they would pay me, and they paid me by cheque. Then they asked what the name of my company was. You see, these are some of the things I wasn’t taught at School, that a cheque can’t be written for you when the Company hasn’t been registered. So I said Multi Task System Ghana limited. They wrote the cheque in the name of Multi Task System Limited, so I had to quickly go and register. Fortunately, when I went to Registrar General I could register Multi Task. Then I took the cheque to Barclays Bank to open an account. So that’s how Multi Task started.
I told you that at some point, Multi Task was able to do a one-million dollar project. It all started based on one of my friends back in school who was called Williams Sam. He is very technology savvy. So that’s how I did it. Got a job with flash photos whilst I was still on campus and going to install for someone. Currently, with my staff everywhere I go, I teach them excel because as I practice I learn new skills which I still use for work. I also used it going to install it for urban roads. So those were very interesting things that we did.
Those times too we might go on “Proce”. When we were doing Procession (Proce), we might dress in “other ways”. Then, the cameras were coming and now they’re here, so this time it is important for the young people to know that now the cameras have come. The internet does not forget, so when they are in school and they are misbehaving, they must be careful. In our time we could get away with a lot of things because the internet was not available and if they even took pictures in our time, they will have to go and wash it and you can’t find it. Now with facial recognition technology, they take a picture of you, they put it out there and they can search for you and find you. You don't go out there exposing parts of your body you shouldn’t. It is really important for our young people to realize that the context of the world they live in today is completely different.
The time they told you first class is not important is not true, because now, it’s a global world. The people that are leaving engineering school in China are competing with you who are leaving KNUST. So if both of you come out with your grade points, you need to make sure you are at the very top, that will give you opportunities to do your postgraduate, it will give you the opportunities for jobs as well. You also can go and take the jobs in China. So the young people of today should take the world that they live in seriously, it’s important; and then when they go to schools it shouldn’t just be about books and they need to learn to work in teams.
One of the things I think I missed was that if, when I chose my topic to do the building services for the two hundred hotel, they had found a mechanical engineering student to work with me, an architect to work with me, a civil engineering student to work with me, a building technology student to work with me, and even a social science student to work with me, we would have developed the skill of working together in teams. Because when you get out of the world, it is going to be teams. Even with that project we could have built a business out of that before we left. This is another point I wanted to make.
CoE Interviewer:
Thank you so much, thank you so much. It’s been really, really good. Thank you so much for your time, and we’ll be calling on you more often.
Guest Alumnus:
Please do. Was my pleasure, so there was this thing about challenges. Some of the challenges are basically the fact that as a pure engineer, rising to the very top is a problem. So, for me I told you what I did, I diversified. So, it’s one of the challenges that I faced and being able to resolve it was very important. Then also, integrity is very important for all of us Engineers. Ghana is going to only develop when we have engineers at the helm of political leadership, so those students who are still in school should be interested in politics, but ethical politics. So that for instance, when you have a minister for Roads and Highways, he is an Engineer.
