Increased investment in STEI advocated

Prof Clement K. Dzidonu

Dr Kwame Boakye, a former President of the Ghana Institute of Engineers (GhIE), has asked Ghanaians to embrace Science, Technology, Engineering and Innovation (STEI) as a formidable way to socioeconomic development.

According to him, the country can initiate all manner of policies and programmes but without systematic effort to harness opportunities available in STEI, “the nation is going nowhere near elevating its people from poverty, disease and environmental degradation.”

To him, STEI had become the main forces driving the successful economies such as the Asia Tigers to compete favourably among top global economies.

Dr Boakye made the observation at the 21th graduation of the Accra Institute of Technology (AIT) over the weekend in Accra.

A total of 153 students from the main campus graduated and were awarded degrees in Accounting, Business Administration, Computer Science, Education, Administration, Hospitality, Information Technology, Network Computing and Multimedia Communication. Additionally, 61 graduands from the institute’s open university were also honoured with Bachelor degrees at the event.

Dr Boakye said it remained regrettable that not much attention and investment has been devoted to science and technology innovation, resulting in a stagnated economy that is heavily dependent on foreign aid.

“We have become a beggar nation, addicted to donation. We are unable to execute without the so-called development partners- political correct way of depriving our dependency. We can implement our national budget without their contribution. We can’t run our institution by ourselves without their help.

“Even elections which lie in the core of exercising our franchise must be partially funded by these partners. This should be a big concern to us,” he said.

He was of the concern that Ghana’s inability to harness opportunities in STEI was the main reason for its poor socioeconomic predicaments, indicating that the trend has to change for the better.
Professor Clement K. Dzidonu, President of AIT, addressing the graduands, appealed to the government to expand tertiary education budget to cover private institutions as well.

He said the private institutions are helping the country to build upon its human capital and expertise in order to fuel the development and transformation of the economy, and therefore, needed the support of central government.

In his view, the government must strategically invest in both public and private higher education system to generate the requisite and critical skills needed for rapid economic development.

“There is no doubt that a well a resourced higher education system by the government as part of an expanded mandate for higher education system can serve as an effective instrument for driving and accelerating Ghana’s economic and social development in an age where global competitiveness of a nation depends very much on its ability and capacity to develop and deploy a highly skilled knowledge workforce, innovation systems and technologies to drive its economy,” he stressed.

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