IBM Ghana partnered with Ashesi in 2012 to begin a mentorship programme that allows the company to engage with Ashesi students, develop ideas around social challenges, and share business expertise. The partnership is the first structured mentorship programme that IBM Ghana has embarked on. Students that participated in the 2012/2013 mentoring programme were Frank Anamuah-Koufie ’13, Emmanuel Nkansah ’13, George Sognon ’13, Rita Osiakwan ’13, Elysia Amarteifio ’13 and Brandford Adjerteh ’13.
As part of the mentoring programme, the participating students worked in groups of two, with an IBM mentor as their coach, to develop business ideas aimed at helping communities grow through the use of social media and other technology. The mentors helped the student teams fine-tune the effectiveness of their idea, and offered industry expertise and career guidance.
The culmination of the programme was a presentation at Ashesi on Friday 1st March, to a panel of judges made up of Ashesi faculty and staff, and IBM Ghana staff. The panel scored the teams on knowledge and understanding of the functional requirements of their concept, how well data mining was leveraged, how developed their business proposal was, and the quality of their presentation.
The overall best team, made up of Elysia Amarteifio ’13, a Management Information Systems major, and Frank Anamuah-Koufie ’13, a Computer Science major proposed a tool to improve the effectiveness of emergency services in Ghana using mobile phones and Google Maps technology. Other teams proposed technology for better waste management and mobile commerce in Ghana.
The two students on the winning team get to join IBM Ghana’s internship programme, and will be able to work with IBM to refine and possibly implement their idea. The other participants in the programme also received prizes and tokens from IBM Ghana, and get to maintain their relationships with their IBM mentors.
“One of the things IBM Ghana is focused on is building local skills and capability,” said Otema Yirenkyi (above), Project Executive for IBM Skills Development and Research Institutes (SDRI). “This mentorship programme helps students to get education, exposure and experience, and the structure allowed us to teach students and enable them engage with some of IBM technology. We have been extremely happy with the results of this programme, and we have learned a lot of good lessons to improve this partnership.”