National Summit on Tertiary Education and Enterprise Development opens
A three-day National Summit on Tertiary Education and Enterprise Development has opened at the Eastern Premier Hotel in Koforidua yesterday the 13th of March, 2019.
The Summit is on the theme, ‘Putting our Graduates to Work’ and is being organized by the Ministry of Education in partnership with the Ministry of Business Development.
The Summit has a wide scope of over One Hundred and Fifty high level local and international participants, drawn from Government, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Business Development, Ministry of Planning, and the regulatory bodies of tertiary education, heads of tertiary education institutions, policy makers, academics, captains of industry, entrepreneurs, students, graduates, innovators, and other related functionaries and institutions as well as participants from Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, and Nigeria.
In his welcome address, the Minister of State in charge of Tertiary Education, Prof. Kwesi Yankah indicated that the objectives of the summit were to Assess the present and future human resource needs of the nation and examine global best practices to guide job creation in Ghana; Examine the tenets of the curricula of tertiary education institutions against the objectives of the National Development Framework; Assess the alignment between the needs of industry and tertiary education institutions; and Develop a national strategy on tertiary education, employment and entrepreneurship.
Prof Yankah stated that the Ministry of Education was committed to being a front line player in providing an action plan to boost the quality of Ghana’s human capital, through education.
“Vulnerability to unemployment is considered higher at the lower rungs of education, and that is why this Government has indeed sought to raise the minimum threshold for free education to the level of SHS, enabling the vision that a more educated population is less vulnerable to poverty” the Minister of State said.
He expressed the hope that participants at the conference would take a look at the whole value chain of education, curriculum, skills training, job market demands, and national development and that together, they would produce a shared vision of how optimally Ghana can convert graduates into a formidable resource for national development.
He expressed gratitude to the Ministry of Business Development as a partner in planning and executing the conference, bringing to the fore opportunities provided by the National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Plan (NEIP), instituted by Government, noting that along with skills in entrepreneurship, came opportunities for self-employment as well as engagement of others.
The three-day summit is expected to close on Friday, 15th March, 2019.
