The commitment of the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast (UCC), Prof. Johnson Nyarko Boampong, to transform UCC into a world-class entrepreneurial university has received a major boost following the launch of the Ghana Britain Partnership for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (GB-PIE) project.
The GB-PIE project is aimed at promoting innovation and entrepreneurship amongst the youth through knowledge transfer programmes.
It also seeks to provide a platform for increasing the visibility of other Innovation for African Universities (IAU) projects running in Ghana.
Launching the Project, the Pro Vice-Chancellor of UCC, Prof. Mrs. Rosemond Boohene, encouraged students to be innovative and create their own jobs after school. She further urged them to take advantage of all the entrepreneurship programmes on campus. While expressing regret over complaints by graduates due to the unavailability of jobs, Prof Boohene challenged them to start their own businesses after completing tertiary institution. The Pro Vice-Chancellor also entreated faculty members to modernize their teachings to develop the mindset of their students to "encourage empowerment, experiential learning, cooperation and reflective learning.”
Speaking further, she called for sustainable entrepreneurship, where young people would not enter into business and afterwards their business activities would impact negatively on the socio-economic development of the country.
"While we are encouraging our young people to go into entrepreneurship, we will give them the idea of impact investment, where when you invest, you will get your financial returns and also take care of the environment,” she added.
She also encouraged white-collar workers to also enter into entrepreneurship, stressing that entrepreneurship was not reserved for the unemployed.
“When we say entrepreneurship, we are not looking at people starting their own business but even when you are employed within an organization you could still engage in entrepreneurial activities and that is intra-entrepreneurship,” Prof. Boohene stated.
The GB-PIE Project Lead, Prof. Desmond Omane Acheampong, in his opening remarks, noted that the African youth population was rapidly growing with a projection of the number doubling to over 830 million by 2050.
“Hence,” Prof. Acheampong added “if properly harnessed, this increase in the working age population could promote high productivity with a more robust economic growth across our continent.”
Prof. Acheampong explained it was against that backdrop the British Council designed and introduced the Innovation for African Universities (IAU) programme, which aims at strengthening the capacity of universities to participate and provide meaningful contributions as key players within the entrepreneurship ecosystem in their respective regions.
Prof. Acheampong, who is also the Dean of the School of Allied Health Sciences, noted that the project was “timely as it is in sync with the vision of the leadership of UCC which seeks to make the UCC an entrepreneurial university.”
Source: Documentation and Information Section-UCC