History of the Internet in Ghana and the prospects of the Blockchain Technology   

The history of Internet in Ghana and the prospects and issues around emerging Internet enabled technologies of blockchain and Artificial Intelligence. Internet is one of the greatest innovations of all time and has played significant role in our lives yet few know how it arrived in West Africa. Proponents consider blockchain as the future of the Internet. Blockchain is commonly described as a distributed ledger of permanent record transactions between parties that are verifiable. The most widely accepted use of blockchain today is as a ledger for cryptocurrencies, most notable is bitcoin. However, other potential uses for the blockchain technology has created excitement and there’s a race to discover new relevant applications. In a similar vein, AI is beginning to show maturity and numerous applications are under development or trials. In spite of the promise of AI we are seeing strong dependence on learning data causing concerns of bias. Both Blockchain and AI are applications that use internet works. They present new challenges in ethics and governance to computer scientists and inherit issues of internet as well. We are pleased to have Professor Nii Narku Quaynor who is described as the “Father of Internet in Africa” and an Internet Hall of fame inductee to talk on the subject.

The relevance of Open Data to Academia 

The relevance of Ghana Open Data Initiative to academia. Open data is the idea that some data should be freely available to everyone to use ad republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control. Open data can help bring diverse benefits to government, businesses and civil society. Several national governments have created websites to distribute a portion of the data they collect. This concept is known as open Government data. Government that enable public viewing of data can help citizens engage within the governmental sectors and add value to that data. In 2012, the Government of Ghana started a project known as Ghana Open Data Initiative. The goal was to promote efficiency, transparency and accountability in governance as well as to facilitate economic growth by means of the creation of Mobile and Web applications for the Ghanaian and world markets. Hugh amount of data set categorized as political, legal, organizational, technical, social or economic is freely available for use by the academic, developer community, civil society organizations, media and industry. But how can we get access to such open data? Come and listen to the President of the Africa Open Data and Internet Research Foundation in person of Mr. Wisdom Donkor educate us on the subject.

Open Discussion: The undergraduate and the job market  

Preparing the current undergraduate for the emerging market. One of the criteria used to measure the success of universities these days is the employability of their products. Concerns have been raised about the readiness of graduates coming out of our universities in Ghana. The academia has been blamed for not producing graduates with the necessary skills ready for employment. Is it? What does industry need? Is there is a gap between the academia and the industry. How do we bridge the gap? We have our very own Mr. Carl Hope Korkpoe talk to the issues. Attached is the poster for your perusal.

Exhibition

Computer Science and Information Technology Students Association (CISTA -UCC)  in collaboration with Department of Computer Science and Information Technology have developed Artificial Intelligence prototype projects which will be exhibited 

The  2018/2019 Executive body is therefore calling all interested stakeholders to witness the open day exhibition and support us on a global scale                       

 CISTA ..... promoting development through technology