London-based Ghanaian IT expert group, Asiedu Information Systems and Technology (AiST) has developed computer keyboards and software in 83 Ghanaian indigenous languages to support the industrialisation drive back home.
“We need to develop our own languages and use them as the means of instructions to rapidly attain our set national development objectives”, said Mr Kofi Asiedu-Berchie, Chief Executive Officer of AiST.
The group was among the exhibitors at the trade fair mounted alongside the just-ended 2020 Ghana Investment and Opportunities Summit held in London last week.
Mr Asiedu-Berchie insisted that the use of foreign languages all the time in various vocational sectors may have serious shortcomings as certain specific instructions may be better comprehended by the targeted people in their own language.
“We cannot industrialise using someone else’s language,” he added.
The AiST CEO mentioned Malaysia as one country which developed rapidly using its own language in every industrial endeavour.
Mr Asiedu-Berchie said that AiST begun the project two years ago and had, so far, produced 1,000 keyboards.
He said that 200 of the keyboards had now been sent to Ghana.
According to him, AiST would soon set up offices in Ghana to vigorously engage the local population in the use of the keyboards and software.
Mr Asiedu-Berchie revealed that AiST had donated 10 keyboards to the Ghana High Commission in London while one library in the Ashanti Region had procured 10 of them.
He appealed to the government to help AiST to market the keyboards in schools and various establishments to promote the use of indigenous languages to a highly technological level.
Mr Asiedu-Berchie insisted that the widespread use of the indigenous language computer keyboards and software would be a step in the right direction, in line with efforts to promote investment and business opportunities in Ghana.
FROM ALBERTO MARIO NORETTI, LONDON
