Public Agenda (Accra)
16 November 2009
editorial
As reported on the front page of this paper, the former CEO of Unilever Ghana, Mr. Ishmael Yamson, at a ceremony to mark African Universities Day in Accra, appealed to companies to recognize and live up to their role in university education and research in Africa.
Mr. Yamson said businesses must clearly identify their current and future needs of competencies, skills and capabilities and work with African Universities in the development of curricula and training programmes that will help transform African economies.
He did not end there; he advised that African Universities should also become "a little more strategic and visionary rather than allowing themselves to be overwhelmed by the challenges that confront them today."
To cap it, Mr. Yamson told African governments to also promote university-business partnership by providing the right environment and offering tax incentives to promote business-funded research. "The tax incentives can also be extended to cover scholarship awards to both faculty and students," he said.
True, university education in Ghana is beset with so many challenges that questions remain about the quality of many of the products of our universities.
Aside teaching and learning, universities are meant to be centres of research into new ways of doing things in business and in society at large.
But the lack of funding and the needed direction have combined to clip the wings of our universities in their quest to become globally competitive.
Public Agenda therefore adds its voice to Mr. Yamson's call to the industry, government and the universities. They should wake up to their respective challenge to make universities capable of effectively responding to the challenges of our times. More industries should invest in students and support with learning materials. Indeed, most of the literature in the universities, especially the government universities are archaic. Government should upgrade its budget to the education sector and increase its budget on research. And the universities themselves should work hard so that they can bring out more quality material. Ghana needs more skilled and intelligent labour from our universities.
Africa is beset with so many challenges inspite of the overwhelming amount of resources the continent is endowed with. Africans cannot therefore continue to gloss over the hard fact that it takes a well educated and skilled human resource that has the tools of innovation at hand to turn natural resources to good use.
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