Day 4-Road Trip to Kumasi and KNUST We had such a long day that I am running a day behind on blogging. We left Accra at 5 a.m. to go to Kumasi which is about 4 hours away. We made our meetings there and then drove to Cape Coast. We didn’t get into the hotel until about .8:30 p.m. (By the way, Cape Coast is where President Obama is coming in July.) It is the former capital of what was once called the Gold Coast during Colonial times. It was worth the drive though. Horace and I ate dinner and listened to the ocean waves crashing in. I woke up the next day and walked outside to this incredible view. Please see photos.
http://picasaweb.google.com/africanjones2go/AfricaPics#
http://picasaweb.google.com/africanjones2go/AfricaPics#
At dinner we ran into a group of students from the University of Georgia who are in Ghana on a study abroad/internship experience. We talked with their coordinators and they had some great ideas for setting up something similar with ISU. They have been doing it in Ghana for 10 years and have had great experiences with students from all disciplines. Okay, well here goes my official blog:
We had a driver take us from Accra, the capititol, to Kumasi where we planned to meet agriculture faculty at the Kwame Ncrumbah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi. http://www.knust.edu.gh/
Kumasi is located in the Ashanti region near the middle of the interior of Ghana. KNUST has an agriculture department there with about 35 faculty members including some who are researching climate change and its effect on crops in Ghana. We thought that they would be excellent research partners on any project related to weather-indexed insurance for crops. We met with the crop science experts, as well as the department chair and five other faculty members. We ended up in about a 90 minute brain-storming session that really churned out some great ideas about variables we should consider in collecting data, what organizations would be interested in purchasing this kind of product, and how to develop it over time. We all ended very excited about the prospects of working together. One low-hanging fruit is just sharing data. They have crop data from the 1960 to 1990 but had not been able to get funding to purchase the electronic data since that time. We purchased and collected the data for the past 12 years. So this in and of itself would be a great reason to partner with them. And I was really impressed with their insight and their questions. They have some great ideas for data analysis too. We are going to have some missing data but I have confidence our actuarial colleagues back at ISU can help deal with that. (Right Krzys? :-).Dr. Quansah did I nice job of facilitating the meeting. We will be working with him and his chair, to get an MOA between the two universities. Aslihan, they are particularly interesting in working with you and potentially other in our Ag. department. They currently have an MOA with Rutgers studying traditional medicines and the way they are grown.
After our meeting we went to the Kumasi market. See photo of mask maker I bought something from. The market is the largest in West Africa with over 10,000 vendors. Unfortunately, there was a fire there the day before. Remarkably this is a rare occurrence and fortunately it didn’t spread that far before it was put out. Maybe there is a need for microinsurance there? I was surprised to find a microinsurer at the Cape Coast when we got there. Need to find out more about that. Most of the day was travel time. So just read and mainly slept and watched the countryside. A long day.Bye,Jim
Kumasi is located in the Ashanti region near the middle of the interior of Ghana. KNUST has an agriculture department there with about 35 faculty members including some who are researching climate change and its effect on crops in Ghana. We thought that they would be excellent research partners on any project related to weather-indexed insurance for crops. We met with the crop science experts, as well as the department chair and five other faculty members. We ended up in about a 90 minute brain-storming session that really churned out some great ideas about variables we should consider in collecting data, what organizations would be interested in purchasing this kind of product, and how to develop it over time. We all ended very excited about the prospects of working together. One low-hanging fruit is just sharing data. They have crop data from the 1960 to 1990 but had not been able to get funding to purchase the electronic data since that time. We purchased and collected the data for the past 12 years. So this in and of itself would be a great reason to partner with them. And I was really impressed with their insight and their questions. They have some great ideas for data analysis too. We are going to have some missing data but I have confidence our actuarial colleagues back at ISU can help deal with that. (Right Krzys? :-).Dr. Quansah did I nice job of facilitating the meeting. We will be working with him and his chair, to get an MOA between the two universities. Aslihan, they are particularly interesting in working with you and potentially other in our Ag. department. They currently have an MOA with Rutgers studying traditional medicines and the way they are grown.
After our meeting we went to the Kumasi market. See photo of mask maker I bought something from. The market is the largest in West Africa with over 10,000 vendors. Unfortunately, there was a fire there the day before. Remarkably this is a rare occurrence and fortunately it didn’t spread that far before it was put out. Maybe there is a need for microinsurance there? I was surprised to find a microinsurer at the Cape Coast when we got there. Need to find out more about that. Most of the day was travel time. So just read and mainly slept and watched the countryside. A long day.Bye,Jim
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