The Ghana Standards Authority (GSA), has certified an innovation by a young Ghanaian, known as ‘Solar Wash’, which facilitates the washing of hands as one of the precautionary measures in the coronavirus pandemic.
The certification, which took a record time of four days instead of twenty-one working days, allows the commercialization of the product on a larger scale for local and external use.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO), of the Ghana Standards Authority, Prof. Alex Dodoo in an interview with Citi Business News, said the Authority will ensure that Ghanaian innovations that will help in containing the spread of the COVID-19 receive the right support and approval.
“It’s a small start, I would admit but it’s a huge jump for the Ghanaian industry. If other companies will realize that their job is to partner others, so that they can make a lot of good products and profit then we can be self-sufficient. That is what the challenge we have been throwing to the industries. Industries must rise to the challenge. There are so many areas. This is a small product but it’s a huge jump, in fact, it’s a mega leap for us if you are thinking of domestic self-sufficiency and building domestic capacities,” he said.
“It is difficult to see how the inventor can move very fast, however what the standard authorities promised is that we have a team of engineers, biomedical and civil engineers, so we have promised him that we are happy to partner in the name of the authority to help them to scale up. This means that we will work with people who produce containers. You don’t necessarily have to use metals. You can use plastic. If we partner with the Standards Authority and with one or two technical universities you can easily scale it up to 2,000 pieces a week and that means that you are creating jobs,” he added.
Meanwhile, the young inventor, a BSC Marketing graduate of the Christian Service University College at Kumasi, Richard Kwarteng, is confident the certification will help him increase production and create more employment.
“We are teaming up with the GSA, so that they will help us in getting all our things right and get into large production. As I said, we have already put the factory up so we are going to employ a lot of people and get this thing on the market because lots of calls are coming in for orders and we can’t fail Ghanaians and Africans. So, we have to do this and do it well. That is why we are partnering with the GSA to get this standardized for the international market,” he noted.
However, Citi News understands that the certification process, which should cost about twenty thousand cedis, came at no cost to the inventor. The CEO of the GSA, Prof. Alex Dodoo is however optimistic that the Ministry of Trade and Industry will absorb the cost to encourage more innovations going forward.
This innovation comes weeks after President Nana Akufo-Addo stated that government is putting in place measured to boost the local manufacturing of equipment to help stem the spread of the novel Cornavirus.
An example was the commencement on April 8th, 2020, of the local production of Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs) as a means to intensify measures aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19 in Ghana.
