KMA, China’s Municipal Govt sign Sister City agreement
The Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) and the Wenzhou Municipal Government of China have signed a Sister City agreement to build the capacities of students of technical tertiary institutions, including the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), through scholarships.
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Per the agreement, which is geared at making Ghana a technological hub in the sub-region, the Wenzhou government is to offer scholarships to some talented students through a criteria to be determined by the selected institutions to be trained in China to master various forms of technology applications in line with efforts to help transform the Ghanaian economy.
The Chief Executive Officer of the KMA, Mr Kojo Bonsu, and the Chairman of Wenzhou Municipal Government, Mr Xu Liyi, signed the agreement recently in Kumasi to fortify their Sister City relation which started two months ago.
Letter of intent
The KMA submitted a letter of intent to have a Sister City relationship with their Chinese counterparts two months ago but per the tradition of the Chinese people, they needed to make a follow-up before the agreement was consummated.
The KNUST, Ghana’s foremost science and technology university, is expected to play a meaningful role in the programme to make it more relevant to current local and global market demands.
The Wenzhou Government is also to identify areas, including culture, in which some of its students would be trained in Ghana.
The two parties also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the construction of a two-storey modern car park in Kumasi by City Investment and Development Company Limited from China to ease congestion in the city.
Mr Bonsu said the agreement was to chart new areas of business collaborations between the two cities and to promote growth.
Among some of the areas the two parties were collaborating in are manufacturing, health, environment, city planning, human resource development, marketing and capital acquisition, he added.
For his part, Mr Liyi said he was in touch with 2.3 million businessmen out of the nine million population in his municipality to help radicalise Kumasi businesses, and, by extension, transform Ghana’s economy.