My story

December 2008, about a week before Christmas. My part of town had never had electricity. That evening a switch flipped, and the neighbourhood went from dark to light. For the first time I could brighten a room safely and at once, without candles or fire lamps. Other places had been living this way for decades. I had just met it, and it felt as though I had discovered the world.

Why it mattered

The year before, the financial crisis had shaken the world. When America sneezes, the world catches a cold, and Ghana felt it. Our town already had little to spare. Watching my parents absorb a shock that came from somewhere else, I decided our family would not stay at the mercy of forces we did not cause.

Electricity showed me what engineering could do about that. Chores changed almost overnight: a rice cooker instead of firewood from the woods, a telephone instead of walking miles to pass on a message. Appliances gave us time, and I spent mine reading about the people who had made that kind of life possible.

Edison and Tesla explained the light. Alexander Graham Bell became the favourite: first because the telephone was a beautiful object, then because of what it let people do. Kwame Nkrumah showed me that one person could be useful on the scale of a whole country. My interest moved from mechanics to electrical engineering, and then towards communication systems.

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  Thomas EdisonPut electric light into ordinary rooms.

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  Nikola TeslaThe mind behind alternating current.

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  Alexander Graham BellThe favourite. The telephone made distance feel smaller.

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  Kwame NkrumahLed Ghana to independence and argued for African unity.

Learning to build it

I took science seriously, and it got me into Presbyterian Boys’ Senior High School in Accra. From there I went to All Nations University to study electronics and communications engineering. I graduated first-class, summa cum laude, and was named the department’s outstanding student. I also served as Chief Justice of the Student Representative Council, and I kept up sport alongside the degree.

Then I set my sights on lands beyond the seas. Go out, learn patiently, and build something that lasts.

Hangzhou

Hangzhou moved like clockwork. There was no pausing and no relaxing; everything moved with direct intent. I learned to move at that pace. I did a master’s at Zhejiang University of Science and Technology, building a laser stabilisation system and co-inventing a patented magnetometer. Then I joined Robsense, building autonomous drones that report to the cloud. Alongside the engineering I taught English and physics. The city taught me what focus looks like when everyone around you has it.

Perth

Perth is the opposite: serene and quiet, with beautiful beaches and a vast amount of space to explore. It also has strong research opportunities, which is what brought me here. At Edith Cowan University, supported by the MRIWA Odwyn Jones PhD Scholarship, I research what happens to the batteries in mining vehicles once they retire, and how to give them a second life storing energy instead of becoming waste.

Back to the light switch

In 2008 I watched a switch bring light to a room that had only known candles. Now I work on how energy is stored and kept. It’s the same question, seen from the other side: how do we keep the lights on?

I build things, and I teach. The hope is to be for someone else what Edison, Tesla, and Bell were for me.