‘Everybody in Ghana has an address’
“Pass by the yellow kiosk near the waakye seller and take left and then right to the mechanics shop before the big gutter by the green storey building.”
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That’s a usual way of giving directions to places in this country because there are no dedicated addresses for most locations in both urban and rural areas.
A Ghanaian systems engineer and innovator in his late 20s called Ses Flyd, however, says everybody in Ghana now has a specific address by courtesy of a system he developed in 2011 and which has been implemented in a free Android telephone application called SnooCode .
“Everybody in Ghana has an address. It is just that they don’t know it yet. When the applicattion is downloaded, one can be anywhere in this country and can be easily located through specific codes.
“ No Internet is needed. It does not matter whether there is credit on the phone or not. It does not matter whether you are getting good reception or not. The basic thing is to download the application and generate a code through it on the phone,” says Ses Flyd.
Though SnooCode is not widely known in Ghana, the feat has been recognised worldwide and has won some significant awards.
These include an Institution for Engineering and Technology (IET) award for innovation in 2011 in England and the top prize at the African Content Award contest organised by the African Union in Morocco 2014.
The young innovator says he had attended World Health Organisation (WHO) and United Nations-sponsored conferences on health-related issues on the continent and how SnooCode could be incorporated, especially in emergency situations.
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He has also been invited to countries like Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Malawi for possibilities of implementing the Snoocode system there because they recognise its usefulness in a variety of situations.
Ses Flyd admitted during an interview with The Mirror at his home at Dansoman Last Stop in Accra that he had not made much headway with Ghanaian authorities over the application because they probably had other more pressing priorities to deal with.
“If there was a cholera outbreak, for instance, everyone with the disease could just go to hospital with their codes and it would be easy to know the epicenter of the outbreak for quick solution,” says Ses Flyd who holds a Masters degree in Systems Engineering from the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom.
Born in Accra to a soldier father, Ses Flyd had his basic education at Burma Camp and the Star of the Sea school in Dansoman. When his father later landed a job with the United Nations in Israel, Ses moved there with his parents before eventually settling in the United Kingdom for tertiary education.
He talked fondly about his days at the Star of the Sea school, saying it was a great place to grow up and learn about the world. He praised the teachers there because they were dedicated and built self-confidence into the pupils.
It was while working with Ecobank in Ghana around 2007 after several years stay in UK, that Ses Flyd felt frustrated at the way addresses were given in this country. He found it difficult locating places.
“If you have lived in Ghana all your life, you don’t see a problem with it. If you have lived in UK all your life, you don’t have difficulty in locating places because it is something that has been solved for you. It is only when you have lived in both places that you are able to compare and contrast.”
He went back to England after the stint with Ecobank and dedicated himself to developing a free mobile application that solves the problem of lack of addresses in developing countries like Ghana.
With the help of an investor interested in engineering, he had come up with his own addressing system by 2011.
“Most people start off to develop an application. Me and my collaborators started to develop a system. The application is just a way to get it to many people.”
Though Snoocode works only on Android for now, Ses Flyd says it would soon be available for Apple or ios users. Apart from giving a person’s location, SnooCode also suggests routes to the place and gives ideas for taxi fare.
“When somebody is in trouble and calls for the ambulance, it is not going to reach an area and start asking for where else to go. With Snoocode, it knows exactly where to go. Unless my neighbour lets me into her house, I cannot get her code. So there is a degree of privacy built into the application.”
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Ses Flyd says he decided long ago that nobody who needed the application would have to pay for it. He simply didn’t want money to be a barrier for people accessing the service.
“In the UK, for instance, you need a post code, street name and house number for your address but all these are condensed into the Snoocode application,” stated Ses Flyd who is also a keen photographer. .