The 2017 celebration would be held under the theme: “Exponential Technologies and Innovation; An Enabler in the Socio-economic Development of Ghana.”

Mr Kwasi Adu-Gyan, the Director General of KACE, said this on Monday at a media briefing on the celebration.

He said Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, the Vice President, would be the Special Guest of Honour at the opening ceremony adding that Mrs Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, the Minister of Communication and Mr Shri Birender Sign Yadav would be the guest and chairman respectively.

Mr Adu-Gyan said the Centre was established to bridge the gap between academia and the ICT industry to ensure that the industry gets the required people.

“As a result of this the second mandate of the Kofi Annan Centre which is to develop, research, and innovate through scientific development is what we are pursuing now, to create jobs in the area of information communication and technology to meet the aspirations of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s Government,” he said.

He said they are in the process of developing the Centre as a major hub for software development and technologies not only for Ghana, but for the sub-region.

“We know that as a third world country, software can be very expensive so we are researching in all areas and embarking on various technologies and models to create job opportunities,” Mr Adu-Gyan said.

Mr Ernest Ofori, Technical Director of KACE, said it is estimated that there would be over six billion internet users by 2020 worldwide and “a trillion connected devices in the Internet of Things, such as sensors, wearables, and trackers.”

“It also deals with Cognitive and Quantum Computing,” including “Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning; Voice Recognition to provide automated real-time translation, Robotics and self-driving or semi-autonomous cars, Additive Manufacturing (3D Printing), among others,” he said.

Madam Sarah Omane, Business Development Manager of KACE, said some of the activities that would be taking place during the celebrations include a high-level discussion among decision-makers on the current and potential threats to operational excellence and security challenges and to share ideas on best practices.

She said: “Entrepreneurs who have built businesses on exponential technologies will share experiences on how to cash in on the emerging and lucrative EXPONTech.”

There would be discussions around the use of drones in various sectors and demonstrations of how drones can be integrated into consumer and industrial applications while participants learn how to fly a drone.

Madam Omane said there would be vendor demonstrations, where a platform would be created for vendors in the EXPONTech space to showcase their innovative solutions and how the nation can leverage on the technology to develop.

Some of the vendors expected at the week-long celebration are Huawei, Samsung, Microsoft, Google, IBM, Cisco, Nuratel, Ericsson and Oracle among others.

A two-day developer-focused conference would also be held for participants to gain practical skills on crafting code, DevOps, frameworks and more.

Madam Omane said there would be a new addition to this year’s event which is to unearth talents, where selected teams from senior high schools would engage in a competiuon called "Rasphe4rry Pi 4 Senior High" which would use "Raspherry Pi kits" to develop an innovation solution.

The teams would come up with a solution that would be applicable to the Sustainable Development Goals.

Mr John Effah, a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Operations and Management Information System of the University of Ghana Business School, said the use of technology innovation could shape the socio-cultural and economic settings of a country.

Mr Effah said with innovation a developing country like Ghana could solve its problems without finding solutions from outside, as India was doing, and called on academia and researchers to support Kofi Annan Centre to achieve its goal.