African Engineers: Sosthenes Buatsi
Sosthenes Buatsi was the 1st person to be appointed a Investigation Fellow in the new Technologies Consultancy Centre (TCC) of the Kwame Nkrumah College of Science and Technologies (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana, when it opened in 1972. In August 1980, Sosthenes Buatsi turned the to start with Manager of an Intermediate Engineering Transfer Unit (ITTU) when the pilot ITTU commenced running in Suame Magazine. Less than his stewardship, until September 1986 when he was appointed the initially Ghanaian Director of the TCC, the Suame ITTU obtained a amount of efficiency in technology transfer that has by no means been surpassed. However Sosthenes Buatsi still uncovered time to create his personal private organization, Ayigya Metallic Merchandise Ltd, which was copied a hundred moments and inspired an business using 5 thousand employees.
Ahead of he joined the TCC in August 1972, Sosthenes Buatsi had put in eighteen months getting put up-graduate function practical experience in Switzerland. A graduate of KNUST’s College of Art with a BSc diploma in metallic jobs structure, Sosthenes was always a arms-on human being with practical as perfectly as building expertise. To help him meet up with the obstacle of controlling the ITTU, Sosthenes was provided depart to show up at a a person-year MSc training course in industrial management in the university’s newly fashioned Department of Economics and Industrial Administration.
When he moved to Suame Journal to control the ITTU, Sosthenes faced a special challenge. The aim of the ITTU was to show new producing systems and the manufacture of new items and invite self-used artisans to come for instruction, major to the transfer of the exercise to non-public workshops. At the same time the ITTU required to promote the items of its workshops, both of those in buy to balance its guides and to reveal the viability of the new merchandise in the local marketplace. Even so, when non-public workshops took over an innovation from the ITTU, there was normally the hazard of the ITTU becoming accused of competing with its very own protégés. To avoid this, the ITTU wanted to transfer on to new functions as before long as the current market could be supplied by the private sector. Taking care of the ITTU demanded an outward focus on the desires of client artisans and a substantial degree of sensitivity and adaptability.
Number of people today have reached this blend of expertise as properly as Sosthenes Buatsi. Most of his successors who have experimented with and unsuccessful have done so simply because their focus was on making cash flow for the ITTU workshops instead than on sub-contracting orders to shoppers as soon as the shoppers obtained the usually means to develop the merchandise. Finding plenty of get the job done to maintain the ITTU workshops fast paced was the duty of the Chief Technician and Sosthenes Buatsi was enormously assisted in this space by Edward Opare and the Principal Technician in demand of the Plant Design Part, Daniel Cheku. With this potent workforce the Suame ITTU done its total functionality in engineering transfer and balanced its books via a long time of political upheaval, energy energy cuts and 3-day-operating.
Following having about in September 1986, Sosthenes Buatsi’s support as Director of the TCC was marked by the introduction of a variety of new systems which include the manufacture of bicycle trailers and hand carts, concrete roofing tiles and refractory ceramic crucibles for metallic casting. He also initiated an enlargement of the TCCs agricultural projects to consist of animal husbandry in association with least-tillage crop generation and the formulation of regionally-developed feed for fish farming. His crowning accomplishment was to win and properly execute a agreement to regulate a three-calendar year rural industrial growth undertaking in Malawi funded by the Environment Lender. This challenge associated Sosthenes Buatsi paying many months in commuting to Malawi, and industry experts from the TCC and KNUST created a lot of visits about the three yr time period, with various investing up to six months on their mission. By this hard work, about twelve rural market systems designed and/or adapted in Kumasi have been transferred to Malawi, thousands of kilometres to the south.
When he returned from Switzerland in 1972, Sosthenes Buatsi brought with him a steel spinning lathe. The machine was employed sporadically in the TCC’s campus workshop and it was not until the late 1980s that Sosthenes made a decision to use it in a little loved ones business. At 1st, progress was sluggish because of to shortages of raw materials: non-ferrous steel sheets, but things got superior when Aluworks Ltd began creating aluminium sheets in Tema and offering them on local markets. Sosthenes moved his small business to Tema to be nearer the resource of uncooked product and persuaded his brother, Robert, then an officer of the Gratis Project in Tema, to supervise the operate. Ayigya Metallic Products Ltd, producing aluminium pots, pans and bowls of good assortment and attractive design, and marketing at selling prices in the reach of most persons, revealed a current market of enormous probable.
Numerous regional traders and artisans sought to established up steel spinning enterprises but the spinning lathes have been not accessible. The Tema ITTU took up the make any difference, and with the whole cooperation of the Buatsi brothers, Kofi Asiamah’s Redeemer Workshop in Tema was served to create replicas of the Swiss device. Within just a 10 years the industry in Tema encompassed far more than a single hundred small enterprises using an approximated five thousand staff.
By this time Sosthenes Buastsi was retired but retained by the TCC as a consultant. Denying himself the spoils of an easy lifestyle abroad, Sosthenes Buatsi invested the full of his doing work occupation, and nicely into retirement, in the service of Ghana and of Africa. He established an instance that his contemporaries may admire, and his successors should really choose as a part product.
