President Akufo-Addo has stated that his uncle and member of the Big Six Joseph Kwame Kyeretwie Boakye Danquah founded the country’s premier university, the University of Ghana (UG).
He said it was through the inspired vision of the pan-Africanist who rejected the colonial government’s decision to site a single university in Ibadan, Nigeria for British West Africa that Ghana got its own university.
Speaking at the launch of an Endowment Fund as part of the institution’s 70th Anniversary, the president said, “how felicitous was that decision and how greatly, it has contributed to the growth of modern Ghana.
“It will be wholly appropriate and not at all far-fetched to describe Joseph Boakye Danquah as the founder of this University.”
“Forgive me for rubbing it in, but three of the five presidents elected in this republic have been produced here…the university continues to be a proud pacesetter mentoring and nurturing several higher institutions and think tanks in the country,” he said to a thunderous applause.
The President also spoke of the University’s mission to train world-class human resource and capabilities to meet the country’s development needs.
The launch of the UG Endowment Fund is part of the university’s strategy to create additional non-restricted resources in furtherance of its target of becoming a world-class institution by 2024.
The Fund is also to enable the institution to improve upon its teaching and research work while enhancing its physical infrastructure.
Describing it as an excellent initiative, President Akufo-Addo said, “an Endowment Fund such as this constitutes the fulcrum around which most world-class universities in the world operate.”
He said government fully supports and shares in the vision of the university to become a research-intensive university and assured he will do all in his power to actualise it.
The President charged the university and other tertiary institutions in the country to find innovative and effective ways of creating a link between the training in the university and needs of the corporate world.