The Dutch media has endorsed the first in
a series of events in Holland to celebrate the prototype vehicle designed and
manufactured by a team of artisans of Suame Magazine in Kumasi.
The exhibition of the ‘SMATI Turtle 1’ at
Paradiso, the national centre for pop music, theater, journalism and debate, was
to offer a major national platform to generate interest in the model vehicle
among the Dutch public and businesses.
Dutch partners to the project, Aarschapp
Foundation, indicates that the Paradiso Festival was a huge success as majority
of Dutch media organizations gathered at the centre to formally unveil the
vehicle for public viewing.
A leader of the Foundation, Melles
Smets, said the general impression by
the media and the Dutch public about the
SMATI Turtle emanates from the fact that “the idea of bringing dead vehicular parts
back to life in a captivating design measured against the African rugged
terrain, the agrarian economic demands and security, and built using bare hands
within a period of two months, without any sophisticated vehicular
manufacturing equipment is a stunning height of engineering creativity, compared
with the creative European technological heights that gave birth to the current
automobile brands”.
The Festival was organized following
the interest shown by the Dutch Government in the project to court international
investment interest for intervention in Suame Magazine, which the Dutch media
describes as “an oasis of technological creativity whose development could set
the stage for Africa’s industrialization”.
In addition to radio broadcast and articles in
major newspapers in the Netherlands, the
Dutch partners to the project were hosted in a LIVE broadcast show on Dutch National
TV station, with a one million audience reach.
Newspapers in Belgium have also carried
reports on the SMATI Turtle 1, whilst Denmark and German media are set to carry
the news on the car.
The SMATI Turtle 1 is built from metal
scraps under the Suame Magazine Automatics Technical Institute (SMATI), a model
technical institutional establishment unit under the Suame Magazine Industrial Development
Organization (SMIDO).
The
car was shipped to Holland in April, 2013 for international exhibition and
promotion to attract investors for large scale commercial production to serve the
African market.
It was successfully tested in
Rotterdam, Holland under the auspices of the Dutch Government, though Inspectors’
report identified
40 areas for further design and engineering improvements for the SMATI Turtle
to go through the next stage of testing.
According to the Consultant to SMIDO, Nyaaba-Aweeba
Azongo, the Festival is to promote Suame Magazine and SMATI Turtle as a “Twin-Brand
of African technological ingenuity, and an emerging African brand in the global
technological industry.”
There seems to be a huge enthusiasm by
the West in this African evolving automobile vehicular model. But the Ghanaian
government and the general public are yet to celebrate the model car as a local
ingenuity worth celebrating.
Mr. Azongo explained the Europeans are impressed
with the creative engineering potential the model car symbolizes and not the
mere state of the vehicle. “They are stunned by the concept behind the model
and the future prospects of the brand, and not its immediate outlook”, he
opined.
The climax of the SMATI Turtle exhibition
would be staged at the biggest car-fair in the Netherlands called the Auto-Salon,
where all the big automobile brands present their concept vehicles for future
production. The stand for this exhibition attracts a fee of 20,000 euro.
Mr. Albert Cophie, Executive Secretary
of SMIDO and leader of the engineering team that designed and built the vehicle
would be in Holland to present the vehicle at the Auto-salon centre.
The doors of the SMATI Turtle can be opened from
all the four corners of the vehicle and purposefully built for farming and
police patrol purposes.
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