President Akufo-Addo launches University of Ghana Endowment Fund

The President of the Republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has launched the University of Ghana Endowment Fund, which is meant to provide additional funding and resources to enable the University improve upon the delivery on its mandate.

Delivering an address at the event, held at the Great Hall of the University of Ghana, on Monday 7th May, 2018, President Akufo-Addo noted that the proceeds from the Fund are to assist in the provision of additional facilities to enhance research and teaching.

Describing the Fund as an excellent initiative, he stated that Endowment Funds, such as this, constitute the fulcrum around which most world-class universities in the world operate.

“My government fully supports and shares in your vision to become a research-intensive university, and we will do all in our power to help you actualize this,” he added.

President Akufo-Addo, urged the University of Ghana, and indeed all tertiary institutions in the country, to find innovative and effective ways of linking up with industry and the corporate world, to engage in quality, strategic research, targeted at finding practical solutions to real life challenges of our society, and thereby actualize research findings to the benefit of our country.

“Indeed, pursuant to our manifesto promise to establish a Research Fund in addition to the Book and Research Allowance to facilitate further research and innovation, I am pleased to inform you that this is currently receiving the active consideration at Cabinet level, and I am confident that, shortly, it will be established by Act of Parliament,” the President added.

UG@70

The launch of the Endowment Fund forms an integral part of the celebrations marking the 70th Anniversary of the founding of the University of Ghana, Legon.

Recounting the history surrounding the establishment of the University, President Akufo-Addo paid tribute to the inestimable work Dr. J.B. Danquah did to mobilise the Ghanaian people to insist on the building of this University.

“It was the inspired, visionary leadership of this great scholar and nationalist, who was described in his lifetime as the Doyen of Gold Coast politics, that enabled the Ghanaian people to reject the original decision of the colonial government that a single university be established in Ibadan, in Nigeria, for British West Africa, and get it to agree to the establishment of a separate university for our country,” the President said.

He continued, “How felicitous was that decision, and how greatly it has contributed to the growth of modern Ghana. It would be wholly appropriate and not at all farfetched to describe Joseph Boakye Danquah as the founder of this University, a fact, which, on the 70th anniversary of its existence, should be vividly recalled by all of us who are the beneficiaries of his work.”