By Samuel Akumatey, GNA
Ho, April 13, GNA - Professor Dennis Yao Dzansi, Head of Business Support Studies at the Central University of Technology, South Africa, has challenged higher institutions in Ghana to prioritise entrepreneurship as the tool for nation building.
He said the nation’s quest to attain the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) must inform higher institutions to “re-define their roles” and work on reaching a “tri-focal” status; combining education, research and know-how exploitation to help communities better their skills and industrialise the country.
Professor Dzansi was delivering a lecture as part of the 50th Anniversary celebration of the Ho Technical University (HTU) in the Volta Region.
The lecture was on the theme “Becoming a Truly Entrepreneurial University: Implications for Management, Staff and Students”.
Professor Dzansi said it was important for students to translate entrepreneurial training into products and commodities for self-empowerment and national development.
He said aside job creation, entrepreneurship training brought about behavioural change that affected the economy in general, and urged universities to embed entrepreneurship into their courses as their activities at the tertiary level provided a third source of income for the institutions in addition to fees and Government subsidy.
Professor Dzansi noted that for a university to become entrepreneurial, it must inject qualities such as positivity and dynamism into its “DNA”, while providing the institution with individuals with entrepreneurial mind-set.
“Universities need to design and nourish an environment where risk taking and entrepreneurship flourishes. They need the ideal structures to become entrepreneurial”, he stated.
Professor Dzansi said all departments of the institution must work together and leverage on stakeholder partnerships, whiles transforming idle structures in that regard.
He said the “protectionist mode of traditional Universities affected their metamorphosis” and stressed on the need to partner existing entrepreneurial institutions for expertise.
Professor Dzansi said curriculum must focus more on case studies, reveal real world business challenges, and engage students in internships at entrepreneurial organizations and universities must consider multi-disciplinary approach and help students own businesses, and support their incubation until they fully mature.
Professor Dzansi said students must be equipped to identify opportunities, formulate new relations, be profit oriented, and be able to manage risks and returns.
GNA
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