" ITREALMS: GUS comes to West Africa

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

GUS comes to West Africa

By Remmy Nweke

UNITED States (US)-based Global University System (GUS), a technologically-based platform for advanced education and poverty reduction, has found it’s way to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

Founder and Vice President for Technology and Coordinator of GUS, Dr. Takeshi Utsumi, disclosed this to ITRealms Online, recently.

Already, a meeting involving GUS, the group’s chief consultant and chief executive, Connect Technologies Limited, Mr. Chris Uwaje, Director-General, Advanced Information Technology Institute (AITI) Ghana, Dr. (Mrs) Dorothy K. Gordon and officials of ECOWAS in Accra.

In a concept paper on the creation of GUS presented by Dr. Utsumi and made available to our correspondent, the initiative is due to take off soon.

According to Dr. Utsumi, steps have been advanced to create GUS in Ghana thereby evolving a new economy in a knowledge society.

GUS, the laureate of Lord Perry award for excellence in distance education, said, would enable African countries and ECOWAS members to leapfrog with abundant supply of excellent brain power.

The project, the researcher further said aims at building a higher level of humanity with mutual understanding across national and cultural boundaries for global peace.

Dr. Utsumi noted that the keys to transformation from industrial to knowledge societies are education and health, and they “are the very basis of the national wealth”.

Institutions partnering with GUS, Dr. Utsumi explained will become members of the larger GUS, United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and UNITWIN Networking chair programme located at the University of Tampere, Finland.

Also these institutions will act as knowledge centers of their communities for the eradication of poverty and isolation via the use of advanced Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).

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