Creatively imitating our way onto the development paradigm of prosperity

The Road Map for Sustained Industrial Development

The path to development is consciously planned through the formulation and consistent implementation of long term pragmatic policies. There is nothing mysterious about the successful development strategies of the South East Asian countries.

They were just consistently deliberate about their development. They found empirically validated methods about development that work and used it consistently, just like Jim Collins has said; and when they got to know why those methods worked they tweaked their way to innovation. It is the belief system that set countries apart in terms of the extent of science, technology and socio-economic development. Faulty development assumptions usually underlie the thinking of the leaderships of poor countries or stagnating economies.

Is it not instructive that some of the poor countries in the past have leapt right to the frontier of high tech manufacturing by imitating technologies of industrialised nations preceding them? The opportunity to imitate/clone an advanced countries’ product and its embedded technology through process mapping and bench marking has always helped young students and self-employed or self-taught hobbyist in less developed countries acquire skills that will allow them to become more productive at innovating or creating new products.

As a developing country let us have the presence of mind and not deny ourselves examples from history. We cannot as a developing country view the world through short term wishful thinking and distort what reality is. This is because the fantasized anticipated extraordinary successful outcomes are bound to be delusional and thus not likely to have contact with reality. These wishful thoughts provide fertile grounds for self-deceptions or wilful ignorance which are pervasive in our part of the world. The consequence is our needless suffering as a society because the policies/actions based on these distortions are obviously not well informed.

Most of the countries that used to be technology imitators are now technology innovators. Jack Welch has said that you need to search for what works, and that tells you what you can do. Then you go ahead and do it. In the development of countries such as US, Japan, and now China, India, and other South East Asians, imitation and innovation have not been found to be mutually exclusive. It is believed that the US built its formidable economy by copying and subsequently innovating on technologies developed in Europe during the industrial revolution.

Japan after World War II transformed its economy by imitating technologies and practices developed in US and Europe. When I was growing up in Takoradi in the 1960s, Japanese tech products received a barrage of criticism for being fake. China, India and other countries in the South East Asia are now on the chopping board for imitating tech products; it is not surprising that these countries are the emerging economies, because that has always been an effective paradigm to socio-economic development. That is how these countries that were at par with us in the 1960s in terms development have reduced their unemployment rates and turned our part of the world into their markets.

These developing countries are leaping into the technological frontier framework by reverse engineering technologies from the industrialised countries. China and India have joined the Space exploration race. Knowledge and understanding has always been cumulative so let’s take advantage of it. There are no quick fixes to sustainable development in this world; but there are empirically validated methods that work. The Chinese and Indians are where they are in terms of development not by luck. Authors of top peer reviewed publication in science and technology, and excellent You Tube videos on Science and technology will clarify the China and India emergence.

As Ghanaians, we imitate virtually everything from the developed world except imitating the manufacture of their tech products and their cultural rituals. We even compete to be the first to get newly released electronic gadgets such as the I-phones/pads. Could you imagine what would happen if the teaming unemployed youth (JHS and SHS graduates) particularly in the slums are “primed” to start competing for first place in cloning these tech products; particularly mobile phones and laptops? Would these youth be asking the government for jobs? But the question is, do we have the critical educated human resource, capacity and government financial resources to develop the culture of creatively cloning these tech products to create jobs instead of providing markets for others? Yes, we do.

Imitation has always been with us; close observers of work at Suame magazine Kumasi, our electronic workshops, carpenters in the furniture industry and metal workers/welders in peri-urban areas are familiar with this. I recall my roommate Kwapps’ amplifier during our undergraduate days. He had built himself an amplifier with transistors criss-crossing on pieces of wood in a wooden/aluminium box when we were in Queens Hall KNUST as undergraduates. One week-end, Kwapps kept on tweaking his amplifier to outperform Architect Leslie Tamakloe’s latest Sansui amplifier acquisition.

These days it should be easier with integrated circuits on the market. I also used locally manufactured fridge guards manufactured by Frempong (the biologist who became the KNUST maintenance Engineer) for more than ten years. Some of our young guys are already building 3D printers, and other tech products locally. My good friend master Collins of Suame Magazine, Kumasi drew my attention years ago that car and truck parts are not all manufactured in-house by the popular truck and car manufacturers but are imported from companies all over the world and put together at the assembly plants.

Without any serious formal technical/vocational education, look at how well our auto mechanics are doing with the maintenance of our second hand cars and trucks mostly through apprenticeship. A critical observer of our furniture and metal works industries would have seen the considerable progress that have been made despite the fact that there has not been a deliberate, consistent, and well-coordinated government support and policies that will help actualize the potentials technical education presents.

The innovation and excellence in local casket manufacturing industry is very commendable, probably it’s about time we explored the export market. The metal work artisans are also accelerating their creative imitation of metal gates and doors; just show them a design or concept from the internet and they will get it done. Of course, we have a lot of work to do on the depth of our finishing generally; that’s where deliberate development of our technical/vocational education in terms of appropriate equipment with emphasis on excellence/competence in output of work becomes crucial. Our casket industry has thrived perhaps there has not been competition from cheap imports. The development and implementation of consistent and sustainable technical education policies that ties into the national economic development policy will ensure excellence in craftsmanship to widen the scope of local and export markets; thus, helping to reduce the rate of unemployment.

Our Potential for Greatness

There is no easier alternative than imitating our way to developing the capabilities to produce high-quality high tech products, and innovation based on these products and technologies to sustainably close the industrial and socio-economic development gap with the developed economies.

Our potential to be great as a country has always not been in doubt. However, what has been missing in our national governance is our inability to consistently elect visionary, selfless, pragmatic and strategic leaders with integrity (principled enough to connect values to actions) who also understand the place of science and technology in nation building to accelerate the socio-economic development of our country.

The construction of the Akosombo dam tied in with the long term Bauxite/Aluminium industry development and the kind of industries that were setup within the framework of Ghana Industrial Holding Corporation (GIHOC) in the 1960s, few years after our independence gives a glimpse of our potential. Where is our Bonsa Tyre? Is it that we found it more profitable to revert to the export of the raw rubber? Are we better-off in the short term getting cheaper tyres from abroad and exporting our raw rubber? Or we did not have what it took to develop the rubber industry? Just like we did with our Gold, Manganese, Bauxite, and Timber, I am wondering whether we are going to do same with our Lithium in the future if we have not already started doing so. Are we ready for Lithium battery technology development as a country? If my memory serves me right, we have canned tropical snails in Ghana before and we were also in the process of setting up a Radio Chemistry Lab during the same period at KNUST to support the Ghana Atomic Commission Kwabenya. Nkrumah’s speech delivered at the foundation stone laying ceremony for the construction of Ghana Atomic reactor at Kwabenya in 1964 is very instructive because Ghana’s pursuit of genetic modification research was on the agenda; a must read. What happened? Is it that we lost our way? After the overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah, the Government of Ghana has not deliberately pursued creative imitation/copycat agenda rather our attention particularly in recent times has been on innovation.

To put it bluntly our fixation on innovation is unnecessary and harmful to our economic development. We sometimes forget that the template of our cocoa industry (with its well-structured research and development support) and the large scale extractive industries that bring the considerable foreign exchange were copied from the advanced economies. Could you imagine if other templates were copied from developed economies to support other crops for example cassava and rice production, processing and marketing. What about serving some of our improved cassava/gari/cocoyam/yam varieties instead of French fries at our Government official dinners to raise their “status”? What will this do to local job creation and national economy?

Learning to Understand Innovation

We define things by what we can do with them. So I define learning in this context as memorizing patterns with consequent change in future behaviour and understanding as constructing relationships among parts, so that you have a satisfying structure; and to construct relationship among parts, the parts or primitives must be memorized and the relationship also discovered and memorised. Imitation could be used to learn how to know and or understand. What we learn and our understanding through our imitation is what constitutes elements of our potential to create, because we would have learnt what to disregard which is crucial for our survival. By learning through imitation of what works from the “masters” we will be subjecting ourselves to procedural memory that could be mobilized in innovation. It is only with understanding of the “masters” through their works can we apply the primitives from our imitative learning to analyse, synthesize or create novel materials/products or processes to accelerate our development with the government’s catalytic policy and financial support.

Ironically recent development in Ghana’s educational system suggests that the rigid mode of imitation prevalent in the classical learning process is considered to be outdated because it is believed that it forces learning by rote. Thus, it is assumed that imitation stifles innovation, suppresses ones unique self-expression or creativity.

The fact that we have innovation as part of our Environment, Science and Technology Ministry shows the high premium we place on originality and creativity as a country. Literature, however, has taught that where ever leaders have anchored their faith in the “church” of innovation, the charlatan-smart-smooth empty talkers who walk on the corridors of power have gotten away with rewards over real workers who can get the work done. This is because innovation is a very amorphous subject. Perhaps in service industry you can get away with it by chanting “push the envelope”!!! “Innovate”!!! I do not believe that you can do that in science and technology enterprise. It has been observed that good imitation is difficult and not mindless as some uninformed people think; it requires intelligence and imagination.

In any case in the learning process there is no doubt that the basic ideas and or primitives/axioms need to be fixed in memory or memorized to enable understanding, because after all if you have nothing fixed in your mind what will you be thinking about to get insight for innovation?

There are important skills and processes that should be mastered without strenuous thinking that culminate into habits which frees up our attention and brain power to tackle more complex aspects of our lives. Which of the basic skills, knowledge and output of life need to be original? Is it how to walk, hold the pencil, how to write the letter d, how to turn the screw driver or how to recall that -2 x -2 = +4, how to carry-out titration in the chemistry Lab? Do we allow our children to innovate by creating -2 x -2 = -22 and live in their own world? According to Paul Flory “knowledge in depth and in breadth is virtual prerequisite to invention. Unless the mind is thoroughly charged beforehand, the proverbial spark of genius, if it should manifest itself, probably will find nothing to ignite”.

Imitation or Cloning does Not Deserve a Bad Name

Imitation or cloning does not deserve a bad name because it is a more reliable affordable route to innovation since it enables adoption of proven or empirically validated methods or processes. Good imitators look for ideas worth copying and synthesize the elements to come up with better and cheaper products or processes. To imitate is not difficult but to imitate well is difficult; good imitators are able to recognize the flaws in existing products or processes, improve on it and tackle the problem more efficiently. Imitation and innovation are both seen as forces of progress and thus regarded as complementary, but not opposing strategies to development. Humans’ imitation of nature is evident in most of our creations.

Imitation carries a stigma but our contemporary culture needs to consciously and deliberately embrace it. If we continue to regard imitation as a low-level activity, something done by those who are not creative and thus undignified we will continue re-inventing the wheel instead of innovating the wheel. It has been established that imitators obviously run on free research and development, as well as marketing.

There is no doubt that whatever problem we have as a developing country, someone, somewhere in the “developed” world has already found a solution or part of the solution, so why should we continue our development journey in wilful-ignorance. Of course, most of the problems that confront us as a developing country are textbook/youtube cases why do we have to waste time, effort and resources reinventing the wheel instead of innovating the wheel. On the basis of what has worked for the developed and the emerging economies we can know what we can do. We have to do what we can but not what we want to. Let's rule out the element of luck in our planning, by drawing on the historical development paradigms of the Americans, Japanese, Chinese, Indians, South-Koreans; South-east Asians generally.

We cannot as a country sit and think that somehow some creative people will come up with technically innovative products to access Ghana government’s venture capital in a sustainable manner. History has shown that it does not happen that way. Consistent, deliberate state policy interventions and regulations tend to play a key role in directing private sector and national level indigenous creative imitation technological capability development.

Imitation/cloning/copycatting or reverse engineering involves taking apart an object to see how it works in order to duplicate or enhance the quality of the object. Ghana should not be left out of developing countries that are leaping into the technological frontier paradigm by reverse engineering/imitating technologies from the industrialized economies.

This is one of the surest ways that we can create economic opportunities to enable our fairly well-trained graduates (despite the constraints in our part of the world) from our universities to accelerate our development. Of course, I cannot imagine how academics in our universities by our current promotional criteria, are going to get promoted on the basis of work on even cutting-edge reverse engineering. Well we can always change the rules of the game to serve the common good. Imitation or cloning is one of the most widely used and efficient mechanisms for learning and understanding.

Sowing the Seed of Industrialization in our Universities

In any case which beginner in reality learns through original self-expression? What percentage of our university students after graduation get themselves engaged in innovative employment (even our smartest “kids” – the medical students and the electrical/electronic students) for which we have to worry (for the engineers) about a suggestion of 10 – 20 % of them taking up deliberate reverse engineering or imitation/cloning of tech product like 3D printers, flat screen televisions, smartphones and tablets, Drones etc in their final year projects? Similar percentages of our pharmacy and chemistry students/researchers with appropriate formulation and synthetic labs could also follow the India pharmaceutical industry’s cloning paradigm.

We have made considerable progress in herbal medicine through Food and Drug Authority certification/monitoring, Herbal Medicine Programme at KNUST and also through some Government Policy. Let’s look at what the Chinese have done with their Herbal medicine - what is its economic value to China? Is the China’s Herbal medicine template worth copying? Could you imagine what a Government sponsored clinical trials on some of our traditional antimalarial herbal medicines for adoption by Ghana Health Service could do to development of this emerging herbal medicine industry? What about value addition for example in the agriculture sector? These could prime industrialization in Ghana because considerable percentage of our well trained graduates from our Tertiary Institutions would have been oriented towards self-employment through deliberate National policy. The potential of orienting some of our students to be formulating healthy products like cocoa toothpaste/mouth washes, cocoa/shea butter creams – to take care of our dry skin during the harmattan in sub-Saharan Africa will not be out of place. The formulation of pepper/ginger/baobab flavoured jams/drinks, pepper/ginger flavoured beverages and confectioneries etc. by our graduates could only be sustained by deliberate Government policy.

The Cost of Innovation and the way out

If we believe and decide to go the innovation route from scratch then we have to understand that this venture just like fundamental/basic research is “wasteful”, expensive, time-consuming and risky in terms of financial resources; and the outcomes are also unpredictable. A thriving imitative/copycat economy is that which can sustainably support innovative culture since there are no guarantees of a billion-dollar breakthrough in innovation. Granted that high risks and costs form the barriers to competition that give successful innovators their edge, how can we even protect our innovations in todays’ world when the developed economies cannot protect theirs?

In development, creativity and innovation have usually been considered as spices; therefore, they cannot be set ahead of the discipline of imitation which is the meat; a well thought out cloning activity is a scaffold to innovation. That is what CRISPR is going to do to our world – and I hope we will quickly get our act together as a country to join the train before it leaves us behind. There is the need to imitate to attain the state of technical proficiency by not only gaining insight but mastering the stock of techniques and skills of the masters. The consequent self-expression that will manifest will be a unique combination that is similar to previous elements taken from everywhere. At the “state of technical proficiency,” you can construct relationship among parts to gain understanding on how tech products or processes work. This can then facilitate the easy duplication of these products and or facilitate synthesis of past experiences to create novel products. The unique scope of the utility of the created product will be dependent on the extent of exposure to the past achievements and resolution of contradictions in experiences.

After all is expert intuition not dependant on the recognition of something from the past in the current situation? Even in art and music the most creative endeavours, it is recognised that originality is a spice to be added, not the meat; how much more in the practice of medicine, electrical/electronic/mechanical engineering, pharmacy, herbal medicine, chemistry, physics, etc. Innovation certainly has its place but like dosage of a medication it has its “sweet spot”, too much of it can be harmful to the system.

Our universities’ dominant culture of thought, keep promoting innovation, however, since the Universities are the bridges between the past and the future, it will serve as well as a developing country if our local Universities incorporated in their curriculum some amount of copycatting/cloning/imitation/reverse engineering initiative by committing at least 10 - 20% of the final year students’ project work to this “creative imitative enterprise.” Those to be recruited for this imitative initiative should be well screened students who are motivated and well inclined to do intellectual work because imitation of materials, tech products and pharmaceutical products at this level should be an intellectual search for cause and effect. Thoughtful imitation or cloning could increase ones analytical and critical thinking skills and consequently one’s ability to synthesize one’s way to innovation. This is because the existing models may have to be well understood to enable the extraction of all the valuable primitive elements for the synthesis of novel products or processes when we are well established.

Once the repetitive accumulation of skills accomplishes the hows and whys then the when and where that leads to unique value of promise by adaptation can follow as a matter of course. The University students involved in the cloning enterprise should be made to start working on these “independent research projects” registered as part of their course modules from the 3rd year second semester in their four year undergraduate programmes, so that one year at least could be spent on these projects. Where needed, teams’ not exceeding three students in a team working on a project should be encouraged. To create a mind-set of excellence in our imitation, students on these projects should be encouraged right from the onset to pay attention to details in execution in order to grasp the unique economic, social and technical contexts of our local and sub-regional markets by adding local flavour. This will ensure excellence in finishing which will create a niche market for us.

Entrepreneurship Training for Industrialization

The final year project works could then be exhibited at the end of the students’ final year competitively for venture capital and entrepreneurship training packages to enable the new graduates to launch viable local enterprises to accelerate our industrialization.

Tweaking existing cutting-edge tech ideas or processes as basis for starting companies are both easier and profitable than creating something from scratch. The training packages of the winners of “priming funds” should include modules that will enable the graduates to appreciate the importance of integrity of character, profitability, financial prudence, paying of taxes and rapid response to market feedback. The final year exhibitions might excite politicians and private sector to put in some funding into the Universities’ starved research and development (R & D) laboratories for long term sustainable science and technological research development. Who knows the multinational companies might finally see our Universities as cost effective locations for R & D to adapt their products to the sub regional markets; thereby, improving the Universities’ research infrastructure for some mix of esoteric cutting-edge research. The government could also reward some of the lecturers and researchers involved in this imitation initiative with some modest research funding to motivate them.

To succeed in this creative imitation adventure there should be a national policy, that will mandate the government through its ministries to deliberately plan and prioritize a well-thought out creative imitation strategy and commit financial resources from the GET Fund, GNPC or National Budget to provide the basic labs and inputs for the students and researchers in this creative imitation projects consistently on a yearly basis.

As a developing country it is imperative that the government by creative deliberate research funding policy compels the Science and Technology Universities, Technical Universities, and the Technical/Vocational Institutes to participate in this initiative. This policy will compel our researchers/Lecturers to use our universities’ imitation initiative as intellectual tools for equipping our students with the hands-on basic and intermediate technological capabilities that will serve as the foundation for the high end innovative applied research and development. If we agree that knowledge transfer is the most important pillar for development then we should also not hesitate to even poach experienced retired engineers and technicians who possess relevant knowledge and skills from abroad; of course, dual citizens will not be a bad idea.

Emergence of KANTANKA Industrial Plant

Some few years ago the country spent a whole year disputing about Apostle Kwadwo Sarfo’s Manufacturing Enterprise and KNUST’s mandate. This dispute erupted from Prof Andam the then KNUST Vice-Chancellor rightful description of Apostle Sarfo’s work as reverse engineering. In the literature reverse engineering, imitation and copycatting are used interchangeably. I visited Apostle Kwadwo Sarfo’s Technology village about 18 years ago, at that time their first KANTANKA vehicle was under construction and when they took us through their Electrical/electronic Department Mechanical Welding Metallurgy, Herbal Medicinal Departments, the work that was going on there even at the time was very impressive. There was an excellent mix of informally trained master-craftsmen and some graduates from KNUST. Could you imagine if KNUST at the time had adopted KANTANKA emerging Enterprise as their “technology village” where students and their lecturers/researchers tested their ideas with Government’s funding?

KANTANKA vehicles are now rolling off the assembly line and it is great to hear that Ghana Education Service has ordered 160 of the vehicles. That is the way to go!!! We are waiting for the parliamentarians and the ministers. I hope KANTANKA is not going to be marginalized with the coming on board of multinational car/truck assembly companies.

Not long ago Ghana had Rlg Communications which was a Ghanaian owned company manufacturing mobile phones and laptops for schools with the Government of Ghana being its major client. Obviously, the parts were imported and put together locally. I wonder what has happened to the company because I do not hear of them these days.

Deliberate Technical and Vocational Training for Industrialization Over the years, we have either blamed the content of our educational system as not good enough or the duration of our SHS as the culprit of our inability to develop even though one could not distinguish between the students when four and three year group found themselves as year mates in the universities.

I cannot see how the free SHS as presently being implemented could lead to creation of jobs in the short or medium term. The progression from SHS to University and then what? In any case what are the present economic opportunities for our University graduates? What is the value of education without economic opportunities? We know that education can accelerate economic growth, but can it start it?

President Akuffo-Addo has recently said that we need to pay critical attention to technical and vocational training because it is the only way we can transform the structure of the Ghanaian economy, and that reduction of unemployment, hinges on technical and vocational education and training. This statement, indeed even though coming too late is heart-warming. I wish it had come before the launching of the free SHS!!!

Consequently, under the Ghanaian-German Financial Development Cooperation within the framework of The Ghana TVET Project, 16,000 master craftsmen, apprentices and their workers are being trained in the following areas: Beauty and Cosmetics, Consumer Electronics, Automotive Repair, Building Construction and Garment/Tailoring/Dressmaking, etc. According to the coordinators of the project 5,000 have been trained since the inception of the programme in September 2017.

Certainly, we are in the process of equipping our technical/vocational institutes which is great but to do exactly what? My understanding is also that plans are far advance to construct 21 modern TVET institutions as well as upgrade 35 existing technical and vocational institutions in the country. If we are becoming a haven for the sale of cloned electrical/electronic high tech products then why don’t we clone them ourselves? At the very least these TVET tools should include ones that will enable the students in the electrical/electronic/mechanical technology Departments to clone/imitate/copy mobile phones, flat TV screens, drones, security gadgets, computer workstations and laptops, surge protectors, high tech metal doors, transformers, agro-processing equipment, motors/pumps including rewinding certain parts in motors.

This imitation adventure of our development could also be accelerated by moving existing resources in paying for SHS boarding and lodging to provide infrastructure and one lunch for the free 2-3 years SHS well-resourced community day technical institutes. This SHS TVET training will dove-tail into the polytechnic imitation project/training. With appropriate start-up funding, entrepreneurship training and government policy on importation, will these graduates be asking for jobs from government even if they decide to terminate their formal education at the SHS level? I cannot wait for an opportunity to buy a customized mobile phone from the Government established “mobile phone cloning village” in Kumasi!!!

This mobilization of financial resources from free SHS programme could be done by retaining the present coverage of the SHS day students’ scholarship and an equivalent coverage given to the boarders. Parents who for one reason or another want to send their children to the boarding house could then top up these Government scholarships; of course deserving exceptions should be made for students whose parents do not have the means and for obvious reasons have to be in the boarding house. This thus will free financial resources from the free SHS for the creative imitation initiative in the Technical and the Vocational Institutes.

This deliberate state driven well-coordinated and funded creative imitation initiative is urgently needed to pragmatically prime Ghana’s small/medium scale local industrialization. As a people we have to agree to move on this path of creatively imitating our way to catch up with economic development of the South East Asians because of its obvious potential of enabling us to creatively clone our way to sustainable economic prosperity.