Research and innovation services hub and a web 3.0 company, Heritors Labs Limited, in collaboration with its partners RISA Fund, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA), and Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) organised a stakeholders’ workshop on standards, certification and conformity assessment in research and innovation in Accra.

The one-day event was held on July 26, 2023, at the Holiday Inn Hotel on the theme “Mainstreaming the Culture of Certification, Conformity, Assessment and Standardisation in Research and Innovation: The Role of Researchers, Regulators and Industry”.

The workshop aligned with the company’s quest to build a culture of standards, certification and conformity assessment to engender the development of globally competitive products, services, and processes across the domestic research and innovation ecosystem.

Funded and supported by the Research and Innovation Systems for Africa (RISA) Fund, the Foreign Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO) and UKAID, the workshop was an ideal platform for various state standards enforcement agencies, business owners and innovators to share ideas on a draft charter that will serve as the framework for developing research products.

Heritors Labs is an awardee of the RISA Fund, a multi-country project funded by the UK through the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) to support research and innovation systems strengthening in Africa.

Professor Marian Quain, deputy director-general of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) opened the workshop indicating that strict adherence to certification and standards were critical in the processes of research and innovation.

To her, standards and certification engender quality and public acceptance of research products and services, aside providing confidence to end-consumers or clients in a modernised ecosystem.

She commended the working partnership between the CSIR, the Heritors Labs and partners for embarking on an initiative that addresses the need for symbiotic relationship between service providers, researchers and innovators in promoting the adherence to standards and pursuing certification as the first option in product and innovation development.

Chief Executive Officer of Heritors Labs Limited, Mr. Derrydean Dadzie, emphasised in his remarks that adherence to standards in the research and innovation ecosystem will reinforce the competitiveness of Ghanaian products and services on the global trade stage that positively reflect the country’s reputation as the hub for innovation.

He was optimistic that the charter will help to create symbiotic relationship among product developers, service providers, innovators, researchers, regulators, researchers, and other critical industry players, that will assure quality, safety and, to a larger extent, interoperability in the research and innovation ecosystem.

As local producers and researchers strive to make the mark in international trade, he reiterated that conformity to these benchmarks enhances the competitiveness of products originating from Ghana, establishing a reputation for excellence and reliability in the global market.

In his keynote presentation, the director-general of the Ghana Standards Authority, Prof. Alex Dodoo, admitted that there is an already existing symbiotic relationship between state certification bodies and researcher as the process of standards development mostly involve technical committees that researchers usually chair.

He said the missing gap has been the deliberateness in deepening the relationship for national development, which has become an existential threat.

Prof. Dodoo said that although the age-long industry-academia mismatch coupled with the shortage or absence of internship opportunities for graduate internships and career development could be contributory factors, one major cause has been the fact that standardisation and regulation are rarely taught as courses at the undergraduate/postgraduate courses in universities.

A panel discussion segment convened speakers from the state standards and certification enforcement institutions, the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA) and Food and Drugs Authority (FDA), as well as representatives from the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).

The panelists explored and shared their perspectives on building a robust framework for standardisation, certification and conformity assessment, including the need for state actors to streamline their activities to curtail existing operational overlaps.

They unanimously agreed that the Charter was a good starting point in ensuring strict adherence to certification and standards practices across the industry and research sectors and that its endorsement by stakeholders would go a long way to achieve set outcomes for standards and certification compliance in research and innovation.

Country Technical Lead for the RISA Fund, Mr. Gameli Adzaho, touched on the Fund’s core areas of focus in Ghana, which is to bring innovation and research together by assisting in the commercialisation of research findings and innovations to support national development.

He said that inculcating certification and standardisation processes into research works was one priority area of the RISA Fund, specifically an ecosystem-strengthening goal of supporting effective research procedures for research stakeholders and enhancing assurance and research quality.

Advancing research and innovation in Ghana is hinged on ensuring the adherence to standards and certification hence the need to embed enhanced education and training to build capacity in the topics of standards and certification.

A representative from the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation (MESTI), Mr Nasiru Salifu, implored innovators to link their research to standardisation and ensure that in developing their products they pay attention to standards and the right certifications right from the start of the work in order not to be denied approval when the final output is realised.

He further applauded the various stakeholders for fruitful deliberations and asked that the report be shared with MESTI to seep into policies to advance the culture of standards and certification in the research and innovation ecosystem.