‘Ghana needs I-can-do-spirited graduates’ – Omane-Antwi

Considering the economic and social problems confronting Ghana currently, the country needs graduates who will not fold their arms and cry for jobs but rather those who can create a future for themselves through entrepreneurship, Professor Kwame Boasiako Omane-Antwi, Vice Rector and Dean of Students of the Pentecost University College, has said.

At the sixth congregation of the Perez University College held at the Perez Dome of the Perez Chapel International on Saturday, 10 March on the theme, 'The Entrepreneurial University: A Model University for the 21st Century’, Prof Omane-Antwi, who was the Guest Speaker, said: “Entrepreneurship in higher education is now recognised as important as a major driver to underpin creativity and innovation in the 21st century.”

“It is also viewed as an appropriate response to succeeding in today’s highly turbulent and unpredictable economic environment. The present time is the hardest to understand. We are living in a period of dislocation, which can be described as one of the most significant turns in the 21st century for our country, Ghana, as well as most countries in Africa,” he said.

The challenges facing Ghana today are many, Prof Omane-Antwi said, listing some as follows: “Low manufacturing value-addition enterprises, low savings and investments, over-dependence on one or two commodities for foreign exchange earnings, high debt, both external and domestic, low private sector response to economic framework and opportunities, corruption in all facets of economic endeavour, over-dependence on largely incompetent, inefficient, wasteful public sector amongst others“.

For Ghana to scale these challenges, the Chairman of the Court of Governors of the Almond Institute, said the country needs capacity building in various facets of the economy.

“We need graduates who are true and authentic leaders, visionary and passionate about achieving results. Graduates who are self-motivated and are not waiting for the future to come to them, unlike the members of the Association of Unemployed Graduates who are waiting for government to give them jobs; instead we need graduates who can create the future for themselves. Graduates who do not wait for others; but rather who take the initiative to make new things happen.

“As a country, we need trained minds devoid of toxic thinking, ready to create wealth in the country through genuine businesses. Graduates trained with authentic leadership principles who are not afraid of the work of Mr. Martin Amidu, the Special Prosecutor; Anas, the ace investigator; or Mr. Daniel Yaw Domelevo, the new vibrant Auditor General. This is where entrepreneurial university becomes crucial in the human capacity building in the higher education institutions of Ghana,” he noted.

Below is Prof Omane-Antwi’s full speech:

PEREZ UNIVERSITY COLLEGE SIXTH GRADUATION CEREMONY THEME: THE ENTREPRENUERIAL UNIVERSITY: A MODEL UNIVERSITY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY SPEECH BY PROFESSOR KWAME BOASIAKO OMANE-ANTWI GUEST SPEAKER, 10 MARCH, 2018

Salutations:

Mr. Chairman, I would like to begin my speech with two of my favourite quotations:

“A quality education has the power to transform societies, provide the citizens with the protection they need from hazards of poverty, labour exploitation and diseases and give them the knowledge, skills and confidence to reach their full potential to develop their countries” (Audery Hepburn – The 1998 UNICEF Special Ambassador)

“Society’s most important investment is in the education of its people. We suffer in the absence of good education: we prosper in its presence” (Donald James Johnson – Secretary General of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development from 1996-2006)

Please let me say how honoured I am, to be here this morning as the Guest Speaker at this august occasion- the sixth Graduation ceremony of Perez University College.

Today is a special day for all of us; a day of thanksgiving and celebration. Congratulations to you the granduands, your families and friends for their support during the years you have spent in pursuit of wisdom and knowledge at this great institution.

Mr. Chairman, an educated and skilled human resource is absolutely critical for a country’s sustained economic growth and development as inferred from my earlier two quotations. The economic history of the West, Far East, Middle East, Asian Tigers, and what we see in the emerging economies today attest to the said fact. Higher education and training are particularly important because they are responsible for the search for the truth and the creation of knowledge, which are the major pillars of today and the future knowledge- based economies, and which help to build the relevant institutional framework.

Mr. Chairman, as usually echoed by President Obama, sound and resilient institutional framework is sin qua non in ensuring good governance and economic development, which seemingly is posing a serious challenge in Africa, Ghana inclusive. We have lost our positive personality traits as Africans; awareness of this fact in ourselves, needs, interests, views, and values. The fundamental values of honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility, and courage that create and maintain cultures of integrity are found wanting in our society today.

Mr. Chairman, we need education with meaning because today, very little in and from education encourages us to reflect on our inner thoughts and motivations. Imagination, creativity, and innovation are not properly encouraged or facilitated in teaching and learning approaches. We need a paradigm shift and this is where I find the theme for the graduation: “The Entrepreneurial University: A Model University for the 21st Century” a change agenda for universities in Ghana, private universities in particular.

Entrepreneurship in higher education is now recognised as important as a major driver to underpin creativity and innovation in the 21st century. It is also viewed as an appropriate response to succeeding in today’s highly turbulent and unpredictable economic environment. The present time is the hardest to understand. We are living in a period of dislocation, which can be described as one of the most significant turns in the 21st century for our country, Ghana, as well as most countries in Africa.

The challenges of Ghana today are many:

· Low manufacturing value–addition enterprises

· Low savings and investments

· Over dependent on one or two commodities for foreign exchange earnings

· High debt, both external and domestic

· Low private sector response to economic framework and opportunities.

· Corruption in all facets of economic endeavour.

· Over-dependence on largely incompetent, inefficient, wasteful public sector

Accordingly, Ghana needs capacity building in various facets of the economy to withstand these challenges. We need graduates who are true and authentic leaders, visionary and passionate about achieving results. Graduates who are self-motivated and are not waiting for the future to come to them, unlike the members of the Association of Unemployed Graduates who are waiting for government to give them jobs; instead we need graduates who can create the future for themselves. Graduates who do not wait for others; but rather who take the initiative to make new things happen. As a country, we need trained minds devoid of toxic thinking, ready to create wealth in the country through genuine businesses. Graduates trained with authentic leadership principles who are not afraid of the work of Mr. Martin Amidu, the Special Prosecutor; Anas, the ace investigator; or Mr. Daniel Yaw Domelevo, the new vibrant Auditor General. This is where entrepreneurial university becomes crucial in the human capacity building in the higher education institutions of Ghana.

The concept of the entrepreneurial university is not new. However, it does have many meanings and identities, including inter alia, notions of enterprise, innovation, commercialisation, new venture creation, employability, and many others.

Within an academic context and environment, entrepreneurialism can be perceived as the development of a set of individual behaviours, skills, and attributes as characterized by the entrepreneur. To make the universities entrepreneurially successful, requires the need to create within its members, especially students, the will and ability to start their own businesses.

Mr. Chairman, entrepreneurial university can mean three things: -

· The university itself as an organisation becomes entrepreneurial. The university must inculcate entrepreneurial thinking through its governance structures and managerial policies and practices. This is where we fail miserably in Ghana because most of the heads of our universities are purely academicians with little or no knowledge/skill in business. They are simply non-achievers in business and therefore continue to push the traditional agenda of research institution forgetting that the entrepreneurial university concept embraces all types of institutions including those with a strong research tradition as well as practice orientation.

· The members of the university – faculty, students, administrative staff, etc. are turning themselves somehow into entrepreneurs – The problem in Ghana is that significant and active involvement of industry practitioners as professionally qualified lecturers are unjustifiably frowned upon by the National Accreditation Board (NAB) against the preference for PhD and MPhil holders as lecturers in our universities. By this NAB rule, we have failed to recruit the right champions to lead the entrepreneur charge in our universities. We are unable to enrich the pool of faculty with innovative and entrepreneurial mindset. Our graduates sadly may be questionably theoretically strong but indisputably bankrupt in practical business acumen.

· The interaction of the university and industry through the exchange of knowledge i.e. technology and knowledge transfer. Traditional universities have failed to transform themselves from traditional research universities to entrepreneurial universities with strong relations to industry and SMEs, thereby encouraging and promoting the entrepreneurial activities of their teaching staff and students. Such paradigm shift by traditional universities does not necessarily mean that universities should abandon their historical contribution to community and national economic well-being, which still stands as: educating students, generating human capital, nurturing talents and intellectual curiosity; supporting the research commons through open, public science; and helping solve real-world community and national problems. The above are ways in which traditional universities have performed with distinction in the past.

Mr. Chairman, private universities have a better chance of reflecting and responding better on public value of higher education institution. They can develop innovative and demand-driving programmes to ginger entrepreneurial spirit in the university students. The constraint is the law which binds them to affiliate their programmes with public chartered universities. In this connection, private universities become clones of public chartered universities running the same old programmes with little or no supervision and yet paying very high affiliation fees to ill-equipped and resource-scarce mentor public universities.

Private Universities can strategically respond better to the movement towards a Triple Helix model of partnership between government, industry, and higher education. The Triple Helix model of innovation refers to a set of interactions between academia, industry, and government. Thus, private universities can develop tailor-made programmes to suit industry or government policy direction without much bureaucracy. It is important therefore for government to take a new and holistic look at the current ill-crafted affiliation process. Government must also support private universities through the provision of GetFund support in the acquisition of teaching and laboratory equipment to support science, technical, engineering and mathematics (STEM) policy directive of government.

Mr. Chairman, before I leave the theme “Entrepreneurial University”, I want to emphasise that the role of the entrepreneurial university is increasingly being seen as important for finding new ways to compete and succeed in uncertain and unpredictable environments. It is also important in finding new solutions to the multiple challenges that need to be addressed for the public good, whether local, national, or global.

In the midst of growing enthusiasm and private enterprise agenda of the current government- one district one factory, one village one dam etc, entrepreneurship has been catapulted to the front burner of the developmental agenda of Akufo- Addo’s government; hence the need to identify who entrepreneurs are and now where they may be found becomes fundamental in our academic discourse. We need to build the entrepreneurial spirit of our students. This is because our tertiary institutions as outlined earlier have not paid attention to instilling the entrepreneurial spirit amongst our graduates. It would be great to see many of our graduates starting viable business entities; invoking the I-can-do spirit.

Mr. Chairman, I am looking forward to the day that most of our universities, especially the private universities, will be seen as a great environment for supporting entrepreneurial behaviour, thinking, and opportunity – an institution that can be labeled as:

· The Entrepreneurial University

· The Entrepreneurial Graduate career centre

· The Entrepreneurial Educator

· The Entrepreneurial stakeholder partners that understands the Triple Helix Model and

· Delivering the Entrepreneurial Outcomes

Mr. Chairman, in this way Ghana can boast of more indigenous companies such as Jospong Group of Companies, Tobinco, Ernest Chemist, Kama Industries, Despite Group of Companies, to name just a few.

As I bring my speech to a close, let me turn my attention back to the granduands. Dear granduands, remember that you have learned many things during your programme of study. However, I believe that there are four (4) cornerstone lessons you need to take with you into your journey to the next level of education, work, or business environment.

· First, you will always be learners in life. Education is centered on various tools. These tools will help lead you through the challenges that you will face personally, professionally, socially and vocationally in your lives. Albert Einstein once said, “…Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death”. Life-long learning/education is the only answer.

· Second, you will always need to broaden your intellectual horizon to include a multi-cultural environment. We are conducting business on a global economic playing field. You need to learn and understand the criticality of various cultures, customs, values, norms, beliefs, and some of the various languages of the world around us. Truly, you will need a second language- maybe French, Chinese, Spanish, or German. Bilingualism is an indispensable economic and competitive tool in the modern day global landscape. It has solid economic value. Ghana is in the losing end in West Africa.

· Third, you have learned to reflect on your experiences and continue to learn about yourselves and your role in society. You have learned self-awareness and critical thinking. This is the core mission of education today so that you can think outside the box as well as think globally and act locally. Creativity and innovation are the bedrocks of entrepreneurship – look around and think of fertile business grounds and open your own business.

·Fourth, and perhaps most important, remain in Christ and his basic message. Paul said in Colossians 2:3, “In Him is hidden the treasure of wisdom and knowledge”. Your education will not be complete without faith in Christ Jesus. You need the fruit of the Holy Spirit: “…love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatian 5:22-23) to operate successfully in this turbulent world.

I extend my best wishes to you as granduands and wish you well in your future endeavours.

I thank you all for listening to me.

God Bless you all. Amen!

Prof. Kwame Boasiako Omane-Antwi Vice Rector and Dean of Graduate School Pentecost University College

About Perez University College

Perez University College was started as a Bible College in September 1992 in Tamale, Northern Ghana by Bishop Charles Agyinasare, Chancellor of Perez University College and founder of Perez Chapel International.

It was then called World Miracle Ministerial College (WMMC) and later Miracle Ministerial College (MMC) when it was relocated in Accra when the founder moved in 1994. In 2013, the institution’s name was changed to Perez College (when the Church’s name was changed to Perez Chapel) with authorisation from the National Accreditation Board.

On November 15, 2015 Perez Chapel International acquired Pan African Christian University College, the first accredited private University College in Pomadze-Winneba, in the Central Region of Ghana. It is located off the Swedru-Winneba highway, about a kilometer or five minutes’ drive from the Winneba roundabout. Despite its close proximity to Winneba in the Effutu Municipality, administratively, it falls under the Gomoa East District Assembly. Currently, Perez University College has two schools: School of Business (SOB) and School of Theology (SOT).

Vision

The vision of Perez University College is to be a Top Class Christian Entrepreneurial University that has Local, National and International influence.

Mission

Perez University College (PERUC) is devoted to training students to be critical thinkers, morally sound, entrepreneurial in outlook and able to provide solutions to societal challenges.

Core Values

Faith – faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour and faith to move the mountains of society.

Honesty – honesty that distinguishes our students and staff from the multitude of un-ethical leaders in society.

Excellence – a touch of excellence in the quality of education and academic leadership that is provided.

Motto

We maximise your God-given potential for dedicated service to transform society.

Slogan

Raising effective leaders to impact their generation.