Ghanaian woman receives Geospatial World Leadership Award

Ms Aida Opoku-Mensah, a Ghanaian national has been awarded with the ‘Geospatial World Leadership Award for Making a Difference’.

Ms Opoku-Mensah, who is also the Director of the UN Economic Commission for Africa’s (ECA) ICT, Science & Technology Division, received the award during the 2012 Geospatial World Forum held in Amsterdam April 24, 2012.

According to a statement issued by the ECA, the citation for Ms Opoku-Mensah’s award read; she has “been a great advocate of geospatial technology in Africa and has provided leadership to several very valuable programmes and initiatives leading to capacity development of African countries with reference to geospatial competence and infrastructure, including promoting the UN GGIM initiative in Africa”.

Furthermore, the citation stated “her pro-active engagement with the geospatial community including academic institutions, policy makers, mapping agencies, the geospatial industry and end users has paved way for meaningful collaboration and cooperation amongst them for overall development of the continent”.

An elated Ms Opoku-Mensah accepting the award, said she was humbled by the recognition from the global geospatial community and stressed that she was only implementing the work programme of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, “which happens to be one of the few institutions that sees the strategic importance of geospatial technology for sustainable development, whether it’s in mining, natural resource management, monitoring elections, infrastructure development or measuring and managing the economy”.

The award is given to persons who have made significant contributions towards development of geographic information science, technology, products, applications, capacity development and in turn helped towards the growth of the geospatial industry as well as making geographic information a public commodity.

By Ekow Quandzie