A University of Ghana final-year student has developed a Twitter bot that automatically calculates and posts the E-levy charges one would incur on any amount.
When a user tags the handle @ghanainfohub and inquires as to how much they would pay for E-levy on a specific amount of money, the bot known as “Ghana Information Hub” replies.
Then, in less than a minute, it answers to the tweet and provides feedback on the precise E-levy that needs to be paid for the given amount of money.
The final-year student from the Department of Information Studies; Kenneth Frimpong describing how the bot operates said
One has to sign up or log in to a Twitter account and tweet ‘@ghanainfohub how much e-levy do I have to pay on that amount, (for instance: GHC1000.00). The individual then receives the retweet, “You will pay GHC15.00 on GHC1000.00.The Twitter user receives the response in less than a minute and this service is available, 24hours every day of the week.
Currently, Kenneth Frimpong says he is working on developing more features on the bot to provide up-to-date information on job openings, current affairs, weather conditions, and prices of fuel and currencies.
He hopes to design more bots on other applications such as WhatsApp, Facebook, and other social media platforms. He is also looking at enhancing access to information on health-related issues as well as in the social and business field to reflect the name of the Ghana Information Hub.
Kenneth says he developed the bot while studying Programming of Information Centre Application, where he gained experience in coding using Python programming language.
Lecturer of Programming of Information Application who helped Kenneth Frimpong, Dr. Karim Awudu said he was excited to see students applying what he taught them.
I am excited to see my students, especially Kenneth applying the skills and knowledge acquired from the course to provide real-life information solutions.’
He noted that the course is increasingly becoming attractive to students due mainly to his teaching strategy and the objectives he has set to ensure that computer programming is demystified and made interesting to Information Studies students through practical coding.
My students have developed various applications and Kenneth’s project is one of the best. We are working on other projects as well and I wish him well. The sky is the limit.
