myTroski is a mobile app which uses a digital map with the capability to provide location and travel planning services including search and finding of places of interest. You can visualize places and explore information about services in your local area such as bus terminals and stops, shops, markets, schools and many more. myTroski operates in a hybrid mode, allowing you to use its services when you do not have mobile data in offline mode or when you have mobile data in online mode. When you are travelling, myTroski can guide you with a digital map, a real-time location indicator (GPS), together with a message in writing or audio (voice) using Akan (Twi) or English. You can obtain myTroski onto your smartphone from Google Play store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=gh.edu.knust.mytroski.
myTroski was launched on Thursday 24th February 2022 at KNUST by the Pro Vice-Chancellor Prof. Ellis Owusu Dabo, who was represented by Prof. Charles Marfo, Provost of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. The launch was attended by several stakeholders including the representatives of the Oforikrom Municipal Assembly, Ghana Private Road Transport Union (GPRTU), Progressive Transport Owners' Association (PROTOA), National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO), Department of Urban Roads (DUR), Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS), Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA), Ghana Police Service, KNUST Security services, Bolt, The Chief of Boadi, UBA Bank, CAL Bank, Maptech, among others. myTroski launch has been widely covered by the media as listed in the following.
Finding places and getting travel directions are common and difficult challenges Ghanaians face daily. It is common to see people asking for directions, and others being given wrong directions and getting lost in the process. These experiences are all too common and have been with us for decades. This problem exists because there is no national standard for an address system which is actively in use for daily activities. Yes, some houses are numbered, some streets are named, and there is now GhanaPostGPS but in reality they are not practical for daily uses in the way Ghanaians find places and move from one location to another. The problem is compounded by several factors, some of which include the informal arrangement of our land parcels, layout of our settlements and roads, limited zoning, and lack of practical addressing system.
In the face of all these challenges, Ghanaians are able to improvise in the way we find places and travel from one location to another. Two of those enduring ways are the names we give to Trotro service stops, and the names of landmarks such as markets, schools, hospitals, places of worship (churches, mosques, etc.), fuel stations, and roundabouts, among others. This traditional approach is ubiquitous, as Ghanaians will mostly point you to a landmark when giving you a direction to a place. In fact this is logical and there is a scientific basis for it called geocoding by qualitative spatial relations. In other words, our use of local place names for finding locations and in giving travel directions is logical, scientific, and it works in the majority of the cases.
But the problem is that we have not improved upon this approach to modernize it for the current challenges we face when finding a place or in our travelling endeavors. This is why we have developed the mobile app called myTroski, to specifically address this problem. We know that Ghanaians are very familiar with Trotro service stops and landmarks, so we mapped these locations and assigned them with the names given by the local population. Additional information such as the kinds of services at the given landmark are included to improve on the description of the landmark. For example, a Trotro service stop named ‘Atta Mills Junction’ can be provided with descriptions such as the town name, road name, facilities at the stop, nearby services and landmark, among others. Also, a landmark such as a restaurant or a food shop can be further described with details such as the menu, opening hours, capacity, and contact information, among others. For travelling purposes, the direction information in myTroski is provided in writing or audio (voice) using Akan (Twi) or English. The direction information in Twi is significant, because it is the most dominant spoken language in the country, and this increases its vocabulary for digital map use, location and travel information. Essentially, myTroski is built on the way Ghanaians already find places and plan their travel but in a smart and a more portable manner by creatively linking our traditional approach to modern technology.
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