ghanaopendata/ghanaian-research-english huggingface dataset:
Smart water management system

Rwandan water supply and delivery system faces a number of challenges. A large number of people in rural areas do not get water anytime they need it. The price of installing water in their houses is quite high; therefore, they use public water stations to get water for their daily activities. Accessing water at public water station is a bit challenging. The station is opened on a given specific time during the day, and this method does not allow people to get access to water anytime they want. They are obliged to attend at the given times that lead to long queues at the station. The payment method is cash, which sometimes leads to corruption when the station manager is delivering the money to the water company. This project solves the problem of long queues at the public water station and allows people to have access to water at the public water station anytime they want. The system will be integrated in a public water station in which the user will have the ability to select the amount of water he/she wants and the payment will be done by scanning RFID card loaded with money on a RFID card reader. Each user will have a unique card configured and the user will be required to have a security password for card safety.

Source: Ashesi
Smart weather prediction and forecasting system

The smart weather prediction and forecasting system is an innovative project that explores the possibility of using predictive machine learning models to accurately predict current weather conditions and forecast weather to replace the traditional Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models. Scientists have attempted various techniques to predict meteorological attributes, and there have been trade-offs between accuracy and cost. Therefore, the system aims to minimize the high costs and complexities associated with NWP models from ultra-high-speed computers and the costly HPC nodes required to predict the weather accurately. Hence, the project analyzes historical weather datasets using state-of-art predictive machine-learning models to predict weather conditions with high accuracy and precision efficiently. The system also aims to impact meteorological organizations in Ghana, Africa, and the world by providing a cheaper and more convenient alternative to traditional NWP models. The system can help these organizations make better decisions and improve operational efficiency by accurately predicting and forecasting future weather. Overall, this project presents a significant advancement in meteorology and has the potential to revolutionize how we predict and forecast weather.

Source: Ashesi
SMARTED: An Inclusive Learning Management System for Senior High Students' Performance Monitoring and Career Guidance.

This research addresses critical gaps in Ghana's secondary education system by developing SmartED, an inclusive Learning Management System (LMS) that integrates career guidance and accessibility features. Despite significant improvements in educational access through policies like Free Senior High School (FSHS), Ghanaian students continue to face challenges in making informed career choices, largely influenced by extrinsic factors rather than personal strengths and interests. The research identified three key issues: inadequate career guidance infrastructure, limited adoption of educational technology in Senior High Schools (SHS), and insufficient accessibility features for users with visual impairments, particularly presbyopia a condition affecting 68.1% of Ghanaian SHS teachers. SmartED was designed to overcome these challenges by providing an integrated platform that enables students to make informed career decisions based on their academic performance and interests, while allowing guardians and educators to actively participate in students' educational journeys. The system incorporates machine learning for personalized career courses recommendations and accessibility features for visually impaired users. Comprehensive testing including component testing, system-level testing, accessibility testing, and user acceptance testing confirmed the platform's functionality, reliability, and usability across different devices and user scenarios. Results demonstrated that SmartED effectively bridges the gap between traditional educational systems and technology-enhanced learning environments, while supporting SDG 4 (Quality Education), SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth), and SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities). User feedback was predominantly positive, about 80% of people who tested the system were extremely satisfied, with stakeholders appreciating the system's functionality, user-friendliness, and inclusivity, though they also provided valuable suggestions for future enhancements. This research contributes significantly to educational technology by demonstrating how integrated, accessible learning platforms can enhance educational outcomes and career preparedness in developing contexts.

Source: Ashesi
SmartTruck: A Smart Monitoring System for Industrial Truck Parking

Industrial truck parking management often faces inefficiencies due to unauthorized parking, leading to congestion, safety hazards, and operational delays. Traditional solutions, designed for urban car parking, rely on manual oversight or complex IoT systems unsuitable for industrial environments. The SmartTruck Parking Management System introduces an innovative, automated approach tailored for industrial facilities, utilizing sensor-based monitoring and AI-driven object detection to ensure trucks park in designated areas. By integrating a load cell, Raspberry Pi Camera, YOLO111 model, and a Flask web server, the system achieves real-time detection of parking violations, delivers alerts within 10 seconds, and provides a user-friendly interface for facility managers. Successfully implemented and tested, SmartTruck reduces logistical bottlenecks, enhances safety, and offers a scalable, cost-effective solution for industrial truck parking, demonstrating significant advancements over conventional methods.

Source: Ashesi
Smartwatch for health monitoring

For almost every individual, their health and well-being are a priority. There has been a rise in health problems, especially heart-related ones, over the years because of our lifestyle. Many people pass away from heart attacks that took them by surprise in their sleep, whilst driving, among others. My project is a smartwatch that helps people to stay alert and focused on their health. It gives users indicators of stress levels and heart-related alerts so that they can take control of their health and well-being. The project was successful as I accomplished recording accurate heartbeats per minute, blood oxygen concentrations, steps taken and prediction of stress levels and heart alerts. The product offers features beyond the smartwatches on the market.

Source: Ashesi
SmPay: Ensuring secure payments for online shopping with escrow and two-factor authentication

Online shopping has surged in recent years, especially during the covid-19 pandemic. As the world moves on from the pandemic, the rate of online shopping has not declined due to the convenience it provides for buyers and sellers. However, there is a higher risk of fraud during online shopping. Particularly, payment fraud between buyers and sellers in the e commerce space is more common. Two fundamental challenges plague buyers and sellers during online shopping: Lack of buyer/seller trust, and PIN code sharing associated with payment methods like mobile money. This project aims to create a secure third-party payment application called SmPay (Secure mobile payment) which uses escrow and fingerprint two-factor authentication features to provide security for buyers and sellers. The escrow feature increases buyer-seller trust by placing payments in a neutral third-party account until certain conditions are met prior to disbursing the funds. The fingerprint authentication feature addresses the issue of PIN code sharing by serving as a second method of authentication that they initiate payment and before they confirm delivery. The system is developed in android studio, using firebase authentication and other technologies to create an overall secure, efficient, and easy to use application. SmPay will benefit users by addressing fraud during online shopping transactions and providing security to both buyers and sellers. Preliminary feedback after testing revealed that SmPay is easy to use and meets its functional requirements, and all errors encountered were also handled accordingly.

Source: Ashesi
Social Media Marketing And Food Consumption Habits Among Young Adults in Ghana

The demand for automation in agriculture has significantly increased, driven by the need to enhance efficiency and reduce reliance on manual labour. Garlic peeling machines, in particular, have become indispensable for farmers, especially those operating on a smaller scale. Despite advancements in automation, about 70% of garlic producers still depend on manual labour for peeling, a process that consumes considerable time and effort. This highlights the inefficiency of traditional methods, where garlic peeling is typically done in batches. In contrast, automation can significantly improve throughput and productivity. In 2021, agricultural automation technologies attracted over $5 billion in investments, underscoring the industry's commitment to improving efficiency and reducing labour costs. A key challenge faced by farmers is managing the energy consumption of these automated systems. As farm sizes increase, so does the energy required to operate these machines, with considerable time spent on power source management and maintaining system efficiency. The unreliable nature of grid power, particularly in rural areas, exacerbates these challenges. Existing garlic peeling machines often lack integrated solutions for optimising energy consumption. To address this, a smart hybrid-powered garlic peeling machine was developed, utilising solar power and battery storage, or grid electricity. The system includes PI motor control to ensure a consistent motor speed, along with a web interface for real-time monitoring of power usage and motor performance. Additionally, remote data monitoring software provides ongoing updates, enabling farmers to track energy consumption and machine efficiency. This innovation not only saves time and reduces energy costs but also minimises downtime, offering farmers a versatile and efficient solution. Moreover, it addresses the problem of unreliable grid power, making it a valuable tool for modern agricultural practices.

Source: Ashesi
SODE: A Social Skills Development Application for Preschoolers in Ghana

In Ghana, there is a growing recognition of the importance of early childhood education in shaping social and emotional development. However, there remains a lack of structured, accessible, and culturally relevant technological tools aimed at fostering social skills among preschool-aged children. This project addresses this gap by proposing Sode, a Social Skills Development Application specifically designed for the Ghanaian context. Drawing from research in social-emotional learning and leveraging interactive 3D scenarios, gamification techniques, and voice controls, Sode provides a progressive web application that engages young learners in developing key social competencies. User acceptance testing involving children from both traditional Ghanaian schools and STEM based institutions provided critical feedback that shaped improvements in gameplay dynamics, cultural representation, and progress measurement features. The application offers a scalable and adaptable foundation for enhancing social development in early childhood education settings.

Source: Ashesi
Solar tracking using reflecting mirrors.

Solar Energy is the fastest growing renewable energy source in the world. The soaring production and the significant technological breakthrough of solar energy in certain countries like China and India has brought about a drastic reduction in the cost of its exploitation. Today, the price of solar PV panels in China has declined by as much as 50%. Despite this immense progress in the solar energy industry, the question of how solar energy has evolved in Ghana and Africa at large, remains unanswered. Solar tracking; a technology that was introduced in 1991 to serve as a proponent of power generation from solar panels, has not yet been implemented anywhere in Ghana and many other countries in Africa. Research shows that Ghana receives sunshine duration of 1,800 hours to 3,000 hours per annum, providing a friendly environment for solar energy exploitation. Due to this, some renewable energy engineers argue that, for a geographical location like Ghana, solar tracking generates an insignificant amount of profit, considering the expense of technology involved in constructing tracking systems. This paper describes the design of “Mtrack”; a low-cost solar tracking technology that uses reflection mirrors to focus sunlight unto the maximum power points of solar panels. This is aimed at reducing the number of expensive motors and sensors used for tracking since this design uses just one motor and a voltage comparator logic but can still focus light unto an entire array of solar panels.

Source: Ashesi
Solar-powered desalination system for coastal areas

More than 75,000 people in Ghanaian coastal areas rely on saltwater consumption, which has often caused dental damage and diseases such as cholera and bilharzia. The wells and boreholes in coastal areas supply water with high saline content because of underground seepage from the sea. The existing desalination technologies are expensive and unaffordable for coastal settlers. Solar energy costs have become relatively bearable in the past decade, and desalination means can be developed using low-cost resources with the excellent compromise to produce potable water effectively. This project uses a solar-powered desalination system to produce 100 litres of potable water per day.

Source: Ashesi
SQL to Graph Database (NEO4J) adapter for enterprise databases

Enterprises have long adopted relational (SQL) databases as their choice for data storage due to their ubiquity and guarantee it provided. However, the need to migrate to non-relational databases has grown as data becomes more extensive and unstructured. So has the demand for tools that help migrate a backlog of existing SQL databases to NoSQL databases. Papers exist describing the migration processes, and tools exist that can practically migrate from SQL to NoSQL, but the focus has been on document-oriented databases such as MongoDB. Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) tools are automated pipelines that facilitate the movement of data between data sources and storage platforms. This project explores the development of such a pipeline tool that can help with the migration of data from SQL databases to graph databases using well-established and industry-recognized tools.

Source: Ashesi
Standalone IMU positioning determining system for UAVs using artificial intelligenece

Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) are Micro-Electromechanical Systems (MEMS) that are able to provide acceleration angular orientation rates information via inertial sensing. Unlike other positioning devices like the Global positioning System (GPS), they do not require any form of communication with an external device or technology in order to obtain this information. This makes them the ideal positioning devices to serve as standalone systems. However, with certain drawbacks associated with the IMU they are unable to effectively serve in this role. Existing schemes employ the use of Kalman filters as a complementary approach to solve this issue but this also presents complexity and drawbacks resulting in the failure of the Kalman estimator especially when there is no GPS signal available. This paper proposes a technique by employing the use of an Artificial neural Network (ANN) to model certain state variables in order to estimate the position of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) quadrotor with the IMU serivng as a standalone positionng determing device.

Source: Ashesi
Strategies to stimulate Ghana’s economic transformation and diversification

After metamorphosing into a lower middle income country, Ghana needs to transform and diversify its economy if it is to consolidate its lower middle income status, reach upper middle income status and drag more of its people out of poverty. Pertinent questions that remain unanswered include: what are the principal self-imposed problems Ghana needs to resolve; what are the institutional changes Ghana needs to make to transform and diversify its economy and what lessons can Ghana glean out of the experiences of other countries that have transformed their economies? Using a comparative analysis of published research and economic analyses, based on the available literature, this paper provides some answers to these questions. Key self-imposed problems include: weak institutions highlighted by a ‘winner takes all’ democratic governance structure that disenfranchises Ghanaians with no connections to the ruling party; weak management of the macro-economy; extremely high cost of borrowing; an unstable exchange rate; high import taxes; a narrow tax bracket with the majority in the informal sector paying zero taxes reducing government revenue; endemic corruption; ineffective land tenure; an inadequate transportation network; unreliable access to electric power; inability to engage in manufacturing; poor sanitation; difficulties in curtailing illegal mining and widespread indiscipline that makes management of people unduly challenging. Critical institutional reform needed includes a constitutional review that limits the power of the executive and makes him accountable for his actions. The number of appointments that the executive has to make to technical and professional leadership positions in the public service and production sectors must also be reduced. The status quo forces the President to make appointments to leadership positions in which he has no experience and confounds the political and economic lives of Ghanaians. Public institutions must be rid of political influence to purge them of political sycophancy, improve the technical capabilities of their leadership and increase their effectiveness. Ghana also needs to get aggressive about limiting avenues for corruption. This can be achieved by eliminating the loopholes and conflict of interest inherent in the constitution that allows corrupt practices to go unpunished especially on the grounds of technicalities: an independent corruption prosecution agency is essential in this regard. The rule of law must be strengthened – particularly in the rural areas and inner cities – and progressive land reform must be carried out. The current situation where fertile southern agricultural land is being co-opted for real estate must be halted to reduce the twin risks of food inflation and food insecurity in the future. A real effort must also be made to break through long-held and negative socialist and traditional views about private ownership so property rights can be properly acknowledged and enforced.

Source: Ashesi
Streamlining Student Identification: A Computer Vision-Based Solution for Campus Security

In many workplaces and schools, identifying people involves relying on manual checks—a time consuming, repetitive, and often mundane task that can lead to fatigue among security personnel and undermine overall safety. At Ashesi University, manual ID checks at campus entry points have created delays, bottlenecks, and potential security risks. This applied project introduces Ashesi-ID, a computer-vision solution delivered as a progressive web application to automate campus access. The system captures live video at the gate for real-time face detection and recognition, while the current prototype leverages video uploads and standard webcams to validate performance. Designed with the future integration of high-end IP cameras, Ashesi-ID streamlines identification, issues alerts for unregistered individuals, and ensures secure handling of biometric data. Through stakeholder-informed policies, it addresses ethical concerns such as bias and privacy and offers a scalable, user-friendly system for enhancing security in higher education.

Source: Ashesi
Streamlining the repair process with a mobile app

The number of everyday devices such as phones, laptops, and TVs purchased, rises every year. Planned obsolescence, the ease-of-purchase for new devices, difficulty repairing, or lack of trust in repair services contribute to massive amounts of e-waste. In the face of these obstacles, many still opt for repairs when possible. However, a significant portion of users replace devices that could be repaired, for many reasons, more so depending on geographical context. In severe cases, some opt for replacement because finding a reliable and trustworthy service nearby is problematic. Out of this, a challenge is posed: how can the process for repairs be streamlined to maximize the portion of users who choose to repair over replace? To solve this challenge, I devise a solution called Fixme, a mobile applicationbased solution that seeks to bridge the gap between device consumers and repairers.

Source: Ashesi
Structural Analysis of a Pedal-Powered Maize Sheller

In Ghana, maize is one of the highest-yielding cash crops, but the supply chain is severely hampered by the lack of access to machines for processing. This study conducts a structural analysis on a low-cost, pedal-powered maize sheller, designed and fabricated by the author and found to operate with a high shelling rate and low kernel damage. To inform an improved iteration of the design, structural analysis was carried out along the lines of reliability of the bearing that was used, factor of safety for both static and fatigue loads, weight optimization, and trend forecast for shelling performances. Using a reliability of 90%, a 180409 Instrument Precision ball bearing was calculated to have a life cycle of 3468.44 hrs which fell in the range needed for agricultural equipment. Moreover, the static and fatigue analysis revealed yield strength values that were higher than the applied stresses. As such, they were deemed safe, except for the bicycle cleats, which needed fillets to reduce stress concentrations. From the weight optimization, it was determined by the author that one-fourth of the cylinder stand's weight can be removed to save on material without hampering the assembly's structural integrity. Lastly, using a forecast of shelling trends, a trade-off was discovered between kernel damage and shelling rate.

Source: Ashesi
Student attendance management system

This project is focused on building an advanced student attendance management system for tertiary institutions such as Ashesi University. Throughout my undergraduate studies at Ashesi, I have witnessed first-hand the challenges that students and faculty face [when] it comes to taking and managing attendance. The manual processes involved in taking and documenting student attendance can be quite cumbersome and time-consuming. Mostly it involves passing around a sheet of paper for student to write down their names and sign next to it. This process tends to cause disruptions in class as lectures are ongoing. It is also tedious for faculty interns/teaching assistant to go through records sheet by sheet now having to key in attendance records for every student into the student portal. As such, this project seeks to build an advanced student attendance management which would automate the manual processes involved in taking attendance. The attendance system would make use of facial recognition using tools such raspberry pi, pi camera, and APIs to provide accuracy and efficiency.

Source: Ashesi