The Eric Danquah Foundation has awarded scholarships to three (3) final year students of the University of Ghana.
The three beneficiaries, Mr. Saeed Harris, Mr. Arthur Marcus, and Miss Monic Semanu, who are pursuing BSc Agriculture with a specialization in Crop Science, were awarded scholarships to cover their tuition and accommodation fees for the 2022/2023 academic year.
At an orientation ceremony on Tuesday, March 21, 2023, Prof. Eric Danquah, Founder of the Foundation disclosed that the students will also benefit from mentoring by accomplished academics. He mentioned that the mentors will instill in the students “the right mix of values, integrity, knowledge, and skills to make them game-changers and history makers in modern plant breeding for agricultural transformation in Ghana in the fullness of time.”
The three students are the second cohort of beneficiaries of the scholarship scheme. In total, seven (7) UG students have benefitted from the Eric Danquah Foundation since in inception in 2020.
The scholarship scheme is the foundation’s flagship initiative dubbed, “Highflyers in Plant Breeding and Genetics Programme”, which is hosted at the West Africa Centre for Crop Improvement (WACCI), University of Ghana.
Prof. Danquah disclosed that the beneficiaries were selected based on a competitive screening exercise led by Dr. John Eleblu, a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Crop Science and validated by Dr. Naalamle Amissah, Head, Department of Crop Science.
Ms. Isabella Gyimah, the foundation's administrator, as well as Mr. Bright Fiakeye and Ms. Sandra Akrofi, both former scholarship recipients, were present at the ceremony.
About the Eric Danquah Foundation
Prof. Danquah who is a professor of Plant Genetics at the University of Ghana established the Eric Danquah Foundation after receiving the 2018 Global Confederation of Higher Education Associations for Agricultural and Life Sciences (GCHERA) World Agriculture Prize (WAP) in China.
He committed to using the $100,000 prize award to establish the Foundation to build capacity in plant breeding for the future of food and nutrition security in Ghana. The foundation commenced operations in 2020.
