UK’s Trade Envoy to Ghana Renews Talks with University Management on Educational Partnership
The Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Nana Aba Appiah Amfo has reiterated the University’s commitment to partnering with institutions and individuals in training students with skills to make them ready for the job market. She highlighted UG’s capacity to influence the future workforce, given its 70,000-student force.
She made this known during a recent meeting with Labour MP for Clapham and Brixton Hill and UK’s Trade Envoy to Ghana, Bell Ribeiro-Addy and other officials.
Deliberations also focused on expanding transnational education collaborations and exploring opportunities in research, technology and innovation, artificial intelligence and job creation.
Hon. Ribeiro-Addy, while emphasising the importance of strengthening the UK-Ghana educational ties, also highlighted the UK’s commitment to deepening partnerships, particularly in knowledge exchange and services.
In his remarks, Samuel Kasumu, Former Special Advisor to Boris Johnson (a former UK Prime Minister), introduced Archiva, an initiative aimed at creating 10 million jobs across Africa in the next decade through business process outsourcing. This initiative, which is closely aligned with the mission of the University of Ghana, aims to equip the continent’s youth with critical skills for the future job market.
Further strengthening the UK-Ghana connection, Alastair Hellyer, Chief Technology Officer (CTO)of Archiva, spoke about how Africa could prepare to take a leading role in the future of work, especially with the rise of artificial intelligence. Hellyer emphasised the need to move away from traditional outsourcing models and build a tech-driven workforce that could address the rapidly changing global business environment.
Pro-VC (ASA) Prof. Gordon Awandare shared UG’s already existing partnerships on Climate Change with the Mastercard Foundation. He noted the University’s readiness to partner in developing its human resource.
Prof. Amfo further called for the broadening of existing partnerships for mutual benefits.
Director of the Research and Innovation Directorate, Prof. David Dodoo-Arhin stated that the University of Ghana has been working closely with institutions such as the University College of London (UCL), Imperial College and Cambridge University, with a focus on protecting Intellectual Property (IP) and fostering industry-academia collaborations. He further spoke about advancing talks on how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be incorporated into IP and Copyright, as well as how UG’s existing IP Policy can be scaled up to a strategy.
Dean of UGBS, Prof. Justice Bawole also touched on the school’s partnership with the British Council through the Innovation for African Universities (IAU) project, part of the Going Global Partnerships programme, to foster the culture of innovation and entrepreneurship within universities and facilitate the development of skills required to build industries, companies, products and services. The project is designed to support the development of Africa – UK University Partnerships that build institutional capacity for Higher Education engagement in entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystems in selected African countries. He also mentioned an existing partnership with the University of Manchester, through a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), that is guiding collaboration in areas of education and research.
Also in the meeting was the Founder and President of GUBA Enterprise, Lady Dentaa Amoateng MBE.
Registrar Mrs. Emelia Agyei-Mensah expressed the UG’s gratitude to the team for the visit and mentioned that she was looking forward to the partnerships that will arise from the visit.
The meeting was moderated by the Director of Public Affairs, Dr. Elizier Taiba Ameyaw-Buronyah, with an Assistant Registrar at the Public Affairs Directorate, Ms. Delali Acolatse in attendance.