Technology transfer projects in rural areas have goals different from those in urban centers. This was the experience in Ghana of the Technology Consultancy Centre (TCC) of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (Knust), Kumasi, in the operation of the first two units of medium-sized technology-transfer (Ittu) is learned in Suam Magazine, Kumasi and the capital of the Northern Region, Tamale.
If the ICC, the first Ittu the middle of the informal sector of Ghana’s largest industrial magazines Swami opened in 1980, his approach is based on more than 9 years of experience working with urban artisans in Kumasi. A survey in 1971 showed that employs more than 60 percent of the workshops Suam Magazine in an activity in connection with the repair of motor vehicles were. Most of this work was carried out with hand tools, but the demand for sophisticated repairs led to the introduction of electric welding machine and a center of Tours a few.
Some artisans have tried to expand their selling range of activities by the introduction of the manufacture of products on local markets. These were mainly associated with the work on vehicles and contain carts with four wheels of the car market in the old and new wood body for Trotros (cars) and trucks cocoa, built over the old hunting truck. Other products from farmers knife blades old band made of local wood and coal stoves sawmill steel plate welded old cars. So if you got the Ittu Suam Magazine focused on the extension of this trend by promoting the production of several new products and the introduction of machinery and know-how to support these efforts.
Tamale, 400 kilometers north of Kumasi, Ghana is the third largest city, but in the early 1980s, it was only about a quarter the size of Kumasi. If Ittu was active in Tamale in 1985, it was found in a very different industrial operation from its precursor in Suam Magazine. The situation in Tamale was more rural than urban. Also the ability to repair vehicles was rudimentary, and every vehicle that requires more attention to the most basic was sent south of Kumasi. Thus, instead of introducing the manufacture of new products for the engineering workshops of private Ittu found themselves with basic facilities for car repairs such as grinding, crankshaft and cylinder boring.
Another area of significant difference was wooden. In Kumasi, the production was made in private workshops of carpentry and carpentry section Ittu primarily engaged in the manufacture of models for the foundry. In Tamale, however, lacked private carpentry everything, but the limited opportunities and are not willing to equip the rural crafts to do justice. When the show Ittu Tamale Beekeeping began cotton spinning and weaving and carpet began to beekeepers, spinners and weavers train, he found himself overwhelmed with orders for hives, and the wheels spinning cotton looms. He was forced to expand the capacity of his carpentry workshop for the delivery of government and NGO-funded projects and private companies.
The Ittu in Kumasi was promoting as a mechanism for technology transfer through the panel, demonstration and more training for professionals who already have designed a basic knowledge. Often involved in pilot production demonstration, but were in Suam success of new products quickly attended by private workshops. In Tamale, but in recent years it was Ittu necessary to use a serious program production technicians to mount table saws, lathes, planers and local carpenters trained and taught them. Only then could the production of beehives, spinning wheels and looms, carpentry transferred to private.
The first head of the Tamale Ittu, USAID Technical Advisor Frank Robertson, used to have the Ittu Tamale as “the most beautiful Northern describe technology-shop of the River Volta. The people of Tamale and Northern Region, the same way to see. They brought in orders for flour mills, equipment for processing cassava gari and later, machinery for the extraction of shea butter was. He for several years before local private engineering firms was trained and equipped to support this production.
It was an important step to turn the 400 kilometers from north to Tamale Ittu, but it was a step backward in terms of the level of technology transfer. But in recent years, the Tamale Ittu was widely recognized as service is a great need to promote the development of basic industries in the north. The most affected were in their belief that the concept Ittu flexible enough to meet the needs was justified in urban and rural communities.
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