SYPALA 2008 Attendees

Event: Students & Young Professionals African Liberty Academy (SYPALA) 2009
Date: August 1-6, 2009
Venue: Ashesi University, Ghana
Organizer: IMANI, Centre for Policy and Education

Last year, 45 of the most promising students and young professionals from Ghana, and from across Africa, were treated to a feast of intellectual stimulation in the rarefied setting of Ashesi University’s Accra campus, a veritable cradle of liberal arts excellence in Africa.

60 of the continent’s finest leaders – CEOs, Army Generals, Financiers, Dons, high-ranking Government leaders and visionaries of all shades and hues – gave freely of their time and wisdom to nurture these incredibly gifted emerging leaders in the ways of success, sobriety, and significance. See last year’s seminar proceedings here and participant observations here

The mode of instruction ranged from the contemplative to the action-oriented, and took the forms of roundtables, lectures, tutorials and seminars, in subject-matters ranging from political economy to business strategy, and from leadership to economic governance. The African condition was dissected; yardsticks for civil engagement were debated; the principles of economics were reassessed and frequently overthrown in debate; and, in some of the most memorable moments at the Alisa Hotel Auditorium, a renaissance in African technology and entrepreneurship was heralded by those closest to the ongoing transformation of the African creative landscape.

WHATEVER YOU DO, YOU CANNOT MISS THIS YEAR’S EDITION OF SYPALA!

Not if you are a student or young professional committed to exerting impact on the course of Africa’s development in this century. Not if you are on the verge of major professional, academic or personal decisions that will have long-lasting effects on your place in society and your relationships with others, and you are in search of guidance by those who have not merely survived such decisions but blazed pioneering trails of glory on the back of such decisions properly made.

YOU HAVE TO APPLY!

THE APPLICATION IS ONLINE AT http://africanliberty.org/node/626

Christopher Bennett and Philip Agyei, SYPALA 2008 Participants

For the most exceptional applicants, some scholarships will be available on a competitive basis.

PROCEED TO APPLY NOW here.

Early applicants will receive free copies of Johan Norberg’s “In Defense of Global Capitalism” and “The Essays in Political Economy” by Frederic Bastiat.

You have to read June Arunga’s introduction to Norberg’s book here and Franklin Cudjoe’s of Bastiat here .

You will be taking the first step in a journey that may change your life forever.

You will be taking the first step in a journey that may change your life forever. Take note of our April 30th deadline. If you have further quesstions, please email Mavis at leamakuu@gmail.com or call her on +233 21 41 70 94 / +233 24 497 3951 during office hours, please.

The programme is offered entirely as distance education, which perfectly suits me. Why?

It allows me to stay here in Ghana, School and at the same time build up my start up Web Development firm, Integrity Internet Marketing LLC.

The Programme
The education language for this programme is English. The Master of Informatics is a multidisciplinary programme, which combines perspectives focusing on the social construction of technology in design and use with perspectives focusing on software engineering and ICT product design processes, and brings these perspectives together in exploring issues of relevance for theory and practice concerning ICT design.

Through individual field studies of design practice and ICT in use, these different perspectives are combined, explored and forged into a broader and deeper understanding of ICT as part of everyday life and society.

Read all about it from BTH’s website.

We all wish Remy a Happy and successful M.Sc.

It means, “You Can Do It If You Think You Can”

Of course, It wasn’t like I was away from Planet earth, or that I had no Internet access.

From the 1st of October I kept telling myself “I will blog tomorrow” every day of the month till the month finally ended.

Any lessons learnt for me? Yes!

There were several topics I wanted to write on, but I only went as far as listing them.

I realise now, I would have come closer to publishing them If I had written drafts of them but by bit.

I dare say the month of October was the most eventful in my entire life.
So many disappointments and down moments occurred.

But on the other hand, a lot of good things came my way also.

What I’m thankful for is that I’ve been able to get over the bad moments and celebrate the small victories.
Life as we all know is full of Ups and Downs. One is up today, and down tomorrow.

As Dr. Kofi Poku, my former Principles of Management lecturer at KNUST used to say, “IT’S ALL GOOD”.

I had always nurtured the dream to own and run my own business throughout my 5 year stay at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science & Technology (KNUST).
4 years pursuing a B.Sc. in Computer Science and 1 year as a National Service Personnel with Interact Afrika Ltd. based in Africa Hall, KNUST.

After my National Service, I applied for an IT Support job with a religious organization in Accra. For some strange reason, the Human Resource Manager was never able to put together a team to interview me and so finally after several weeks of being asked to “Call back next week”, I gave up on them.

I then followed up on my friend, George Appiah’s offer to join Telesoft Company Limited. Telesoft was being run by himself and Elolo Avisseh.

I joined Telesoft with Kwame Nkansah. And Oh! Christopher Bennett was there also.
We had some really great moments back then.

Somehow, things didn’t quite work out as I expected and not wanting to go through another bout of Job applications, I began to give serious thought to my dream of setting up my own Web Development Company.

Thinking back, I realize I was really scared back then about taking this step. And wasted spent a month or two making up my mind. This was somewhere in August 2007.
I received some great support and advice from George throughout the period and finally incorporated my business on July 3rd, 2008.

Starting up a business in Ghana is quite a challenge. At least in my case.

The main challenge I faced back then was with my parents. They did not understand why I wouldn’t seek employment as most of my mates had done, but would to choose to go through the ‘wilderness’ of Entrepreneurship. These comments were heightened especially when my age mates who were gainfully employed started driving cars and generally exhibiting signs of a good living.
But I still stuck to my guns. Which guns anyway?

They have finally come around to understand my view point and I’m enjoying some really great support from them now.

But as I speak write, I’m being advised, almost every week by well-meaning adults to seek employment and run my business part-time very frequently. Their argument is that, once I gain employment, I can look forward to a regular salary, which I currently do not enjoy. They reckon I can use the salary to support myself and my family and attend to my business on weekends.

I really do appreciate these concerns but then I know deep down that’s not an option for me. I have a thousand and one explanations for that. But the main reason is that, at this stage in my life I need to spend all the time I can to really establish the business and so working part-time is not an option for me at all.

And they are sending some real tempting offers my way. I sure will have to turn all of them down which may also strain my relationships with these fine folks.
But I know it will all work out well.

This brings to mind one of my favourite hymns during my Secondary School Education at the Presbyterian Boys Secondary School (PRESEC), Legon:

“Through the love of God Our Saviour, All Will Be Well”

.

I can’t name you all, but my sincere appreciation goes to everyone who has supported me in one way or the other.
To all who desire to thread the Entrepreneur’s Road, NEVER GIVE UP ON YOUR DREAMS!!!

Like R. Kelly says I definitely can see the light at the end of the tunnel. And I definitely will be there SOON!!!

Sometimes, the case is that Non-Profit Managers are not aware of the extent to which they can promote their activities by using Information Technology tools e.g a website.

But it hurts more when Managers are aware, but do not have appropriate funds to carry out in house Technology Projects.

This is where I come in.

Since August 2008, I have been working with 2 Non-Profits to identify their Technology needs and also assist them to secure funds for these Technology projects.

The Evergreen Club of Ghana (ECOG), established in 1987 is and NGO focused on Environmental and Sustainable Development issues.

At the moment, I’m part of the ECOG team of volunteers writting a propossal for a 5 year Environmental Campaign aimed at raising awareness about the need to keep the environment clean.

The Alliance for African Women Initiative (AFAWI) is a development oriented Non-profit, Non-sectarian, Non-governmental organization that seeks to ensure equitable development for both rural inhabitants and poor urban dwellers.

AFAWI is also planning a 3 DAY CONFERENCE ON CAPACITY BUILDING FOR HIV SUPPORT GROUPS, of which I am involved in also.

Working with both these organisations has been very beneficial since I have gained a lot of insight into the challenges faced by Non-Profits in Ghana.

In the coming weeks, I will be writing about on-going projects, challenges faced as well as Open Source Technology Tools for Non-Profits.

Here are a few Non-Profit websites I frequent:

• Tech Soup
• Tactical Technology
• Nonprofit Technology Network

I finally got the time to go pick them up last Friday due to the fact that I was covering the 14th Edward Bouchet Workshop which was held at the Frederick Maafo Memorial Building, University of Ghana, Legon from the 21st-25th July, 2008. It was organised by the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMS) whose Director is Prof. F.K.A. Allotey. I was at the Workshop in my capacity as the Webmaster for IMS and needed to get some information about the workshop to update the IMS website with.

I’m currently putting finishing touches to my marketing material after which I will launch the marketing campaign for my Web Development Company.

I’ll keep you posted on events. Wishing you all a fruitful week.

After waiting patiently for my certificates, I saw the gentleman coming back empty handed. What?? My heart sank!
I was to come back the following Friday for my certificates because the Director was yet to sign them.
Apparently, the office personnel were waiting for my verification before going ahead to process the documents.
So why wait for me to travel all the way to the premises before asking me to provide such a document. I certainly had my contact number and email on the forms.
Why didn’t they ask me to provide this proof during the application process?
The young man who brought this news certainly couldn’t provide the answers and could only promise to call me if the documents were ready before Friday.
I was just too disappointed to follow up with his superiors.
But I definitely will do so come, Friday the 18th of July.

The 2 day program which I coordinated, aimed at teaching the BAC heads in using the Internet Effectively in their day to day activities.
The resource person was George Kwabenah Appiah, an independent Strategic Technology Consultant in Ghana. Christopher Bennett, was also present to assist.

On Monday, when we got to the venue of the training, (NBSSI Headquarters in Accra), there was no Internet access from ZipNet, their Internet Service Provider. After fruitless efforts to get the ISP to restore Internet access, we had to move to the Accra Business Advisory Center to use their Dial-Up account.

Since there was network in the building George setup an ad-hoc network so the participants could access the Internet, via his laptop. The training went very well after this, with the participants really enjoying the training.

Yesterday, we went back to the Headquarters again, hoping that the Internet service had been restored. Well, we were in luck.
Despite initial battles with our router, we had another successful training session.

At the end of the training programme, we discussed with the participants how best they could pass on the knowledge gained to their clients.

Here are some photos from the 2 day event.

George Appiah training participants

Gladys and Anthea (Accra and Tema BAC Heads)

Michael and Philomena (Ada and Dodowa BAC Heads)

Gladys and Jonas (Accra and Weija BAC Heads)

Chris helping participants

Remy helping participants

Participants with Training Team

Even though I have to submit a proposal to a client tomorrow afternoon, I managed to squeeze some hours into starting the site, thanks to George’s prompts.

Keep coming back for more of St. Remy’s raves and rants.