The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has launched a 5-year strategic plan which will serve as a guideline for its operations.

According to Director-General of CSIR-Ghana, Professor Paul P. Bosu, the strategic plan which was launched last week Thursday at its head office in Accra was developed based on four key drivers.

The four key drivers Prof Bosu noted were financial resource mobilization, staff and system performance improvement, re-branding and visibility improvement, private sector Research and Development (R and D), and technological innovation.

Additionally, he said the aforementioned four key drivers which formed the basis for the development of the strategic plan had four different objectives which are to develop and transfer at least three industry-driven technologies per institute per year, and to generate at least 30% of annual recurrent expenditure by 2027 through the attraction of funding.

The other objectives of the strategic plan are to ensure positive visibility of CSIR through weekly branding in the print and electronic media, enjoy significant goodwill from identifier stakeholders, and get 80% of the workforce to be passionate, result-oriented, and positive and ethically minded enough to pursue the vision of CSIR.

Prof Bosu further asserted that aside from the objectives, the five-year strategic plan had various targets which the CSIR was determined to meet through hard work and dedication.

Some of the set targets he outlined were the operationalization of 130 private-public partnership arrangements, addressing 52 stakeholder interests annually, distribution of 140 different types of promotional materials to at least 375 stakeholders, and the publication of 280 feature articles.

Others include the development, validation, and adoption of 195 industry-relevant technologies by industries, the publication of 195 scientific papers, the training of 500 staff in specialised areas to drive technology development, attraction of USD 306.37 M from submission of winning proposals, and the benefit from more attractive incentives, loans and award schemes by at least 1780 staff.

In terms of monitoring and evaluation, the Director-General asserted that the four key drivers which formed the basis for the development of the strategic plan would be measured through various performance indicators such as the number of industry-driven technologies developed, and feature articles published.

According to Prof Bosu, the grand total budget for the strategic plan was ₵22,237,534.80, adding that a Strategic Plan Auditing Team (SPAT) responsible for auditing the operations of the Strategic Plan Implementation and Coordinating Committee (SPICC) and Institute Strategic Plan Implementation Committee (ISPIC) would be established.

Both the SPICC and ISPIC that would be established under the corporate CSIR and at all 13 institutes, Prof Bosu said would be made up of seven members and would be mandated to manage and drive the implementation of all aspects of the strategic plan, and to drive the internal implementation of institute strategic plans.

Prof Bosu, in a brief remark, charged the members of the Council to “have the mindset of a private organisation to ensure that the strategic plan is successfully implemented to achieve its set targets and objectives”.

Copies of the five-strategic plan were presented to the Council members of the CSIR after its launch for their perusal.

 BY BENEDICTA GYIMAAH FOLLEY