First Ghana-France education conference held in Accra
The Minister of Education, Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, has charged managers of tertiary institutions to redouble their efforts at research, to find appropriate solutions to issues hampering the growth of the economy.
She said research findings would provide educational institutions with applicable information about “what you teach and the kind of product you churn out from your institutions”.
Addressing participants at the opening ceremony of the first Ghana-France Higher Education Conference in Accra yesterday, Prof Opoku-Agyemang said the core mandate of higher education institutions was to address problems through research and not complaints.
The two-day conference, organised by the Ministry of Education and the French Embassy, sought to establish a strong linkage and collaboration between the institutions of higher learning in Ghana and France.
Participants included representatives of the University of Cape Coast (UCC), Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) and the University for Development Studies (UDS).
She mentioned that even though the country’s educational system had been the envy of many nations, “Ghana continues its search for feasible and sustainable mechanism for effective and efficient higher education system that reflects and addresses the ethos and passions of our national development agenda”.
“It is, therefore imperative for us to develop a cost-effective and sustainable system that ensures effective governance and greater access to higher education for national development,” she said.
She identified funding as a challenge hindering the ability of educational institutions to conduct effective research, stressing that the government should intensify its partnership with educational institutions to enable them conduct effective research.
The French Ambassador, Mr Frederic Clavier, said the two countries had decided to enhance bilateral relations in the areas of higher education, research and economic issues.
He mentioned academic co-operation, research and student mobility as priority areas both countries would focus on for the next four years.
For his part, the Head of Delegation of the European Union to Ghana, Mr Claude Maerten, said although Ghana had made tremendous efforts to expand access to higher education, more work needed to be done to improve its quality.
“The main reason is that we live now in a globalised knowledge economy and the best way to keep a competitive edge and improve standards of living is to enhance quality and levels of education,” he said.
Mr Maerten noted that a serious challenge to the development of capacity building in Africa, was the non-return of high-level scholars and professionals after completing their academic mobility abroad.
Story: Dominic Moses Awiah
