The Regional Transport Research and Education Centre, Kumasi (TRECK), which is a World Bank Africa Centre of Excellence (ACE), is the expansion of the Road and Transport Engineering Programme (RTEP) established at KNUST in 2004 with support from the Ministry of Roads and Highways, Ghana and the World Bank.

RTEP was set up as part of the capacity building component of the Highway Sector Investment Project (HSIP) to train professional engineering staff of the Ministry of Roads and Highways (MRH) locally. At the outset, the University of Birmingham (United Kingdom) provided technical assistance through lectures and mentoring of staff in setting up the MSc Road and Transportation Engineering programme. Additionally, under the Transport Sector Project (TSP) of the MRH in 2009, support was provided for staff capacity building, equipment and laboratory infrastructure, and short courses for the sector engineers in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM), Chennai, India.

In 2016, through a grant from the SWISS State Secretary for Economic Cooperation (SECO), under the Ghana Urban Mobility and Accessibility Project (GUMAP), a postgraduate programme in MSc Transport Planning was set up in response to gap analysis by consultants Transitech of Switzerland.  This also led to the establishment of a collaboration with Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) Transportation Centre (TRACE) for staff and student exchange as well as staff capacity building in the development of digital courses.

TRECK was launched as an inter-disciplinary Research Centre by the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi in 2018, to hone skills from various departments at the University including Civil Engineering, Planning, Supply Chain and Information Systems, Mathematics, Computer Engineering, Electrical/Electronic Engineering, Geomatic Engineering and the Centre for Disability and Rehabilitation Studies.  

TRECK also maintains strategic networks and partners at national, regional and international universities, research institutes, ministries departments and agencies, and stakeholders under the Africa Centres of Excellence (ACE) for Development Impact Project. Regional academic and sectoral partners are from Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Senegal. We have international partner universities in Germany, Switzerland and USA. The ACE Impact Project grant, which is for five years beginning 2019 and ending 2024, is expected to undertake applied research with industry, train high calibre manpower at the postgraduate (MSc/PhD) level, run demand-driven short courses and undertake technology transfer for the transport sector in the region.