KNUST opens campus in Accra
The Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) has opened an accra city Campus at Kwabenya in the Ga West District of the Greater Accra Region.
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The GH¢10 million six-storey complex with a basement has nine 150-seater lecture halls, 120-seater computer and server rooms a number of offices.
The opening of the campus is expected to ease the burden on workers and other mature students who had had to travel to the main campus in Kumasi to access education.
Speaking at the inauguration of the centre, the Chairman of the University Council of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Mr Kwame Saarah Mensah, called for a re-assessment of the human resource needs of all sectors of the economy in order to identify employment avenues for fresh university graduates.
He said universities in the country were producing large numbers of graduates who were unable to find jobs, adding that the situation could predispose such young persons to social vices.
Shrinking economy
The KNUST alone, he said, had a student population of 40,000. He them asked, “How can Ghana’s shrinking economy employ such numbers?”
Mr Saarah Mensah said he sincerely believed that as a nation “we have to sit up and do soul searching. Let us look at all sectors of the economy critically and we can create jobs for the youth otherwise in the near future, the results will be there for all to see.”
Agriculture
Mr Saraah Mensah said it was sad that Ghana was the world’s second largest importer of tomato puree and a large importer of onions. He asked whether “we are serious about agriculture in this country? If we do things correctly, the Graduate Unemployment Association of Ghana will cease to exist,” he added.
The Vice-Chancellor of the KNUST, Professor William Otoo Ellis, said the construction of the facility was part of the university’s programmes to offer more opportunities to prospective students and also bring meaning to the university’s initiative of “bringing KNUST closer to your doorstep.”
In view of that, he said, the Institute of Distance Learning (IDL) was restructured in 2005 to reposition it to offer a complementary platform to normal conventional lecture room sessions delivered on the main campus.
The IDL currently runs 17 undergraduate programmes from the various departments of the university in addition to 13 postgraduate programmes. The student population in excess of 10,000 in the 13 different centres in Ghana and two offshore pilot virtual campuses in the United Arab Emirates and Nigeria.
The DCE called on the private sector to put up hostels in the area to complement the efforts of the centre and make it more meaningful.
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