The School of Agriculture, College of Agriculture and Natural Sciences, has organised a seminar for students and national service personnel on scholarship opportunities available at the Masters and PhD levels at the Faculty of Bioscience Engineering (FBE), Ghent University, Belgium.

The Dean, the School of Physical Sciences, Prof. David K. Essumang who represented the Provost of the College of Agriculture and Natural Sciences, Prof. Livingstone K. Sam-Amoah, noted that UCC was keen on achieving its internationalisation agenda.  As a result, he said the University would do everything possible to create opportunities for its faculty and students to have international exposure. “We are guided by four ‘Es’ in the University’s Corporate Strategic Plan that is Empowerment, Excellence, Equal Opportunity and Ethical Behaviour” he noted.

Prof. Essumang said the University was expecting the collaboration to be formalised with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to serve as a working document to guide the relationship. “We are not only interested in sending faculty and students to Ghent University but we expect to receive faculty and students from Ghent University on exchange programme,” he noted. He expressed gratitude to the officials from the Ghent University for extending such opportunities to students of UCC.

The Dean of the School of Agriculture, Prof. Elvis Asare-Bediako, asked the students to take advantage of the scholarships being offered by Ghent University to upgrade themselves.  He advised them to be good ambassadors of the University when they got the opportunity to study abroad.The Coordinator of the Seminar, Prof. Daniel T. A. Okae-Anti, explained that the team was on campus because of the outstanding performance of a student from UCC School of Agriculture, who pursued M.Sc. in Physical Land Resources at Ghent University and graduated in September, 2018. He encouraged the students to interact with the team from Ghent University by asking all the relevant questions to enhance their chances of benefitting from the programmes and scholarships on offer.

Two officials from the International Training Centre of the Faculty of Bioscience Engineering (FBE, Ghent University), Anne-Marie De Winter and Michel Flement made presentations on their University.  Anne-Marie De Winter told the students that there were scholarship opportunities at the FBE at the Masters and Doctoral Levels.  The FBE is one of the top ranked institutes of the world acclaimed Ghent University.

She said the Faculty was receiving applications for students to pursue Master of Science in the following programmes: Aquaculture, Food Technology, Rural Development, Physical Land Resources, Nutrition and Rural Development, Environmental Technology and Engineering, Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Sustainable and Innovative Natural Resource Management and Soils and Global Change (IMSOGLO).  She explained the admission requirements for the programmes on offer, scholarship package and application procedure among others.

The students and national service personnel present at the seminar asked diverse questions on the presentations and were given the possibility to enquire about admissions and scholarship opportunities through: applications.itc@ugent.be, phd.itc@ugent.be, Annemarie.dewinter@ugent.be and Michel.flement@ugent.be.

The High Commissioner of India to Ghana, His Excellency, Shri Birender Singh Yadav, has called on the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Joseph Ghartey Ampiah.

 The visit was a follow up of UCC’s collaboration with Gujarat Forensic Sciences University (GFSU), India.

Appreciation to GFSU 

Welcoming the High Commissioner and his delegation, Prof. Ampiah, expressed  gratitude, to GFSU for its commitment towards the collaboration which according to him would lead to training professionals to provide evidence-based forensic investigations in the country. He added that “though our Department is young, we can learn from your experiences and Gujarat can also benefit through this partnership”. He commended India’s effort to support Ghana through grants to undertake development projects.  He was excited about the level of involvement of GFSU and the Indian High Commission in Ghana in the collaboration, adding that “A lot has been done within a short possible time”.

Importance of the Collaboration

His Excellency Mr. Yadav said they needed to establish the collaboration quickly because of the long-standing historic friendship between India and Ghana. “Through this partnership, our students and security personnel will be trained in various Forensic Sciences disciplines and we will be able to learn from each other for a common goal,” he said. He assured the Vice Chancellor that they donate cultural and history books to the University’s Library.

The Indian High Commissioner to Ghana said it was a great opportunity for UCC to have the collaboration with Gujarat Forensic University for the Forensic Sciences programme because currently Gujarat has a reputable international market level of training police officers in about 45 countries across the world. He also assured the Vice-Chancellor that they were committed to support UCC to run the programme effectively and efficiently. 

UCC GFSU Collaboration

It would be recalled that the University of Cape Coast signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with GFSU in 2017 in India. The agreement among other provisions was to strengthen the capacity of faculty members in UCC’s Department of Forensic Sciences and advanced training opportunities for Ghanaian students in the field of forensics. A key feature of the agreement was GFSU’s commitment to establish an Institute of Forensic Sciences at UCC.

GFSU is the world’s first and only University dedicated to Forensics and Allied Sciences, with an objective of training forensic experts to meet their increasing demand in India and globally. GFSU is a state university with advanced and specialised postgraduate academic programmes.

Indian High Commissioner to Ghana was accompanied by the Head, Department of Forensic Sciences, Dr. Richmond Afoakwa and other lecturers from the Department.

The University of Cape Coast's Centre for Coastal Management has been conditionally selected as one of the five new Centres of Excellence in Ghana under the World Bank’s African Centre of Excellence (ACE) IMPACT III Project. The upgrade of the Centre to the status of Africa Centre of Excellence in Coastal Resilience (ACECoR) will receive a proposed funding amount of US$5,861,700.00 from the World Bank and Government of Ghana to scale up and expand on its present focus on applied research, technical professional training and policy engagement to include short courses and postgraduate (PhD and Masters) education of Ghanaian and regional students in key new areas to address coastal degradation issues that are fundamental to economic growth of the sub-region.

The call for proposal, which was opened to all universities in West and Central African countries, was rolled out by the Association of African Universities (AAU) and the Regional Facilitation Unit (RFU) of the Africa Centres of Excellence (ACE) Project, with support from the World Bank, under the ACE for Development Impact (ACE Impact) Project. Funding for the ACE Impact project is from the World Bank and Agence Francaise de Developpement (AFD).

ACECoR will give impetus for UCC to embrace more multidisciplinary approach to address the issues of coastal resources degradation by strengthening the resilience of coastal areas particularly in Western and Central Africa both biologically and economically. Attention will be given to enhancing research and training of young scientists and the next generation of African professionals to be supported through scholarships, exposure to industry experiences based on internships and conference participation. The Project will introduce institutional Post Doc opportunities and will attract Post Doc’s from within the region especially from Francophone Countries with priority on female candidates.

The research and academic programs will focus on Coastal engineering (design of adaptation solutions for coastal risk reduction); Forestry engineering for nature-based solutions; Maritime Meteorology and Ocean Hydrology Modeling; Natural Capital Accounting; Coastal Zone Land-use Planning; including issues related to Blue Economy and Social Resilience.

ACECoR was selected after an independent team of evaluators, consisting of members from in-country panel of reviewers at the National Council for Tertiary Education (NCTE) and other African educational and scientific community supported by diaspora and global technical experts, reviewed 105 proposals that were submitted to the RFU by higher education institutions from the participating countries. Proposals were subjected to several stages of evaluation, including (i) desk reviews; (ii) external evaluation by a subject matter specialist; and (iii) a site and leadership evaluation of shortlisted proposal sites to ascertain the readiness of the institutions in terms of governance, leadership and infrastructure.