Kumatoo

Kwadwo Safo is a Ghanaian inventor who was born in 1948. He attended the Ghana Technical Works Institute in Kumasi before working for three years as a welder at the Volta Aluminum Company (VALCO), West African Metals and the French African Company. In 1971, Kwadwo Safo founded the Kristo Asafo Church which has since then fundamentally contributed in developing and promoting science and technology of local origin in Ghana.

The beginnings of the church were not easy as Kwadwo Safo had to feed himself and the converts. To earn money for the church, Kwadwo Safo decided to make a kind of low quality soap that apparently cured skin problems apart from washing clothes. The soaps were sold in villages and towns around the city of Kumasi. This was one of his first inventions.

Passionate about music, Kwadwo Safo decided to manufacture, successfully, electrical drums, loud speakers, mixing consoles, amplifiers, preamps and 7-stringed bass guitars. Since then, this unique inventor has kept on designing and fabricating new devices such as sewing and embroidery machines, a mobile block molding machine capable of producing 16 blocks at a time, flat screen sensor televisions with volume or channels that can be increased or decreased by just clapping hands (among other features), weed slashers, spot welding machines, sensor taps… Inventions by Kwadwo Safo and his team are mostly made with local materials.

Some of Kwadwo Safo's most notable inventions were made in the automotive industry. In 1998, he manufactured his first automobile, the Kantanka Saloon. In 2006, the Kantanka Onantefo I (4x4) was manufactured, and an improved model was produced in June 2007, the hybrid Kantanka Onantefo II (4x4). On December 30, 2007, the Kantanka Obrempon (a black 4x4 limousine), which is 26 meters long, and a yellow excavator with caterpillar tracks were exhibited as well.

The Kristo Asafo Church has a Technical Division, the Great Kosa Ltd., which is well established in Ghana and aims at building an automobile assembly plant in the Central Region of Ghana. Great Kosa Ltd. employs several people and should be able to manufacture sedans, pickups, SUVs and buses. The main hindrance to the materialization of this plant would be primarily financial. Technically, Kwadwo Safo and his team are able to manufacture some of the components of the future assembly line.

The former Managing Director of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz, visited Great Kosa Ltd.'s Technology and Research Center, which shows that the work of Kwadwo Safo has gone beyond the boundaries of Ghana. The Technology and Research Center of Great Kosa Ltd. is made up of several departments including Mechanical and Automobile, Electricity and Electronics, Foundry, Plant Medicine, Animal Research, Building and Construction, etc. that develop products tailored to local needs to help reduce importations.

Most of the machines / equipment manufactured by Kwadwo Safo are the result of a thorough study of imported equipment / machines. He often buys an appliance that he disassembles and reassembles. He can then make changes to build more efficient devices using local materials.

Kwadwo Safo is working on another very important project: the manufacturing of an aircraft. The six-cylinder aircraft engine is apparently already operational. The team is supposedly currently developing plans to fly the aircraft over the next few years.


Great Kosa's webiste: http://www.kantanka.com