IBM Ghana has partnered with Ashesi to begin a mentorship programme that will allow the company to engage with Ashesi’s students, develop projects around real-world problems and share business expertise. This is the very first structured mentoring programme IBM Ghana is embarking on. Students participating in the programme are Frank Anamuah-Koufie ’13, Emmanuel Nkansah ’13, George Sognon ’13, Rita Osiakwan ’13, Elysia Amarteifio ’13 and Brandford Adjierteh ’13.
(Ashesi students with their IBM Ghana mentors)
As part of the mentoring programme, the participating students will work in groups of two to generate innovative business ideas on how to “enable our communities and economy [grow] through the use of social media and technologies.” Student teams have one semester to develop their ideas and will work together with IBM mentors, based in Ghana. The mentors will coach the students on the project, share technical and industry expertise, career guidance, and effectiveness.
Each student team will present its solution to a panel of judges at the end of the semester, and the winning team will have their solution implemented at IBM Ghana. Some of the areas students will be creating ideas for include traffic information, cashless trading, collaborative development in rural areas and waste management.
“It is an exciting experience,” says Elysia Amarteifio ’13. “We get to discover available technologies, and are learning to apply them to real problems. It is good training for us and the coaching and lessons we are receiving from our IBM Ghana mentors are really helping us in personal development.”
As part of communication, participating students will also get to join IBM’s Lotus Greenhouse, a community website that features a network of professional and customer communities all over the world. Members of IBM’s Lotus Greenhouse have access to software resources through which they are able to discover information, collaborate with people, share ideas and improve business results.