Bolgatanga Technical University launches 10-year strategic plan
The Bolgatanga Technical University (BTU) has launched a 10-year strategic plan aimed at improving access and quality of technical and vocational education and training (TVET) in the country.
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The 51-page plan, which spans from 2023-2032, focuses on increasing student enrolment taking into account diversity, quality and equity, improving infrastructure facilities and services for teaching and research.
Additionally, the strategic plan aims at strengthening and improving teaching, learning, research and community service as well as improving internationalisation and stakeholder collaboration, particularly with industry, other universities and alumni.
Also, the plan will seek to strengthen ecological agriculture through research, teaching and learning, training and extension services, improve resource mobilisation and utilisation and improve corporate governance and management systems.
The ceremony was on the theme: “shaping the future of Bolgatanga Technical University”.
Irony
At the launch of the plan, the Upper East Regional Minister, Stephen Yakubu, said ironically as a country, “we earlier gave more attention to grammar type of education than technical and vocational education training.
“As a result, technical education was reserved for the less intelligent students, which has been a contributory factor to the nation’s development”, he stated, saying “it was wrong that as a country, we paid lip service to technical education in the nation’s formative years”.
“Thankfully, we seem to have realised this mistake leading to the attention currently being paid to Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) by the government,” Mr Yakubu said.
Problem solving
He stated that technical education, which was intended to solve societal problems, was the best way to develop a country, adding, “there are a number of peculiar problems in the region which the university must research into and design the needed technology to solve it”.
Mr Yakubu stressed, “interestingly, our technical universities and institutions were not set up to solve our national problems and that there was the need for a paradigm shift in the discharge of their mandate”.
He expressed his joy about the many technical universities dotted across the nation as it was a major step towards the growth and development of the country, adding “if such institutions carry out their mandate diligently, they will be able to make meaningful contributions towards national development”.
Furthermore, he charged BTU to ensure that the new strategic plan was well implemented and executed to address some of the myriad developmental challenges confronting the region, and said, “as a technical university, you have a pivotal role to play towards the progress of the region”.
Essence
A former Chief Executive Officer of the Savanna Accelerated Development Authority (now Northern Development Authority) Dr Charles Abugre, said the essence of technical and vocational education was to dismantle and assemble things.
He explained that the purpose of a polytechnic was to design parts of equipment while the mandate of a university was to design systems for the growth of the society, saying, “I am putting this across for us to know how far we have come and to encourage you to have a higher vision to train your students to be problem solvers in the society”.
Other speakers
In a remark, the Chairman of the Strategic Planning Committee, Professor Theophilus Azungah, said achieving the objectives of the plan, required deep thinking, commitment and resource mobilisation from both internal and external stakeholders of the university.
The Vice-Chancellor of BTU, Professor Samuel Erasmus Alnaa, said the plan was an output of extensive consultation with various stakeholders whose opinions had been incorporated into the document.
On behalf of the governing council, he thanked all stakeholders who made diverse contributions towards the writing of the strategic plan.
A former Pro Vice-Chancellor of the University for Development Studies (UDS), Professor David Millar, who chaired the event, charged technical universities to come up with innovative ideas to invent machines and equipment to address problems in the society.
