71st New Year School launched
The School of Continuing and Distance Education (SCDE) of the University of Ghana (UG) has launched the 71st annual New Year School and Conference, a forum that brings together experts and academia to discuss topical national issues.
The three-day event, which will begin from January 13 to 16, next year, is on the theme: “Ghana Beyond Aid: Challenges and prospects”.
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At the launch in Accra yesterday, the acting Provost of the College of Education of the university, Professor Michael Tagoe, called on the organisers to include local people and senior high school students in the programme to enable them to understand the vision of the Ghana Beyond Aid agenda.
“We need to go to the grass roots and let our local people understand what we mean by Ghana Beyond Aid.
We need to rejuvenate our local economy, meaning we must educate our people to the level that they can own their own destinies,” he said.
He said to ensure that the country developed rapidly, the authorities must focus on “plugging the loopholes at the ministries of Education, Food and Agriculture and Health”.
Change of attitude
Prof.Tagoe added that the Ghana Beyond Aid agenda would be meaningless if people’s attitudes towards work, corruption, among others, were not changed.
“We must all have a service mentality and must be willing to serve our country in all our endeavours.
I believe that if, as a country, we are able to produce a new mentality of self-reliance, then the agenda will become a national agenda and not a political one linked to a particular government or political party,” he added.
New Year School
The acting Dean of the SCDE, Prof. Olivia A.T. F. Kwapong, said the conference would be opened by the President at the Great Hall of the university on January 14, 2020.
She said panelists would touch on topics on human capital development, effective pension plans towards Ghana Beyond Aid, among others.
The panelists would include ministers of state and experts from the private sector and international financial organisations such as the World Bank, she added.
“Aside attraction will be a special setting for the youth on Thursday, January 16, 2020, with a member of the Council of State, Mr Sam Okudzeto, as the special guest.
“He will lead a session on ‘Ghana Beyond Aid: The youth perspective’, and ‘Ghana Beyond Aid: Preparing the youth for the future’,” Prof. Kwapong said.
Significance
A Minister of State at the Office of the President assigned to the Office of the Senior Minister, Mrs Catherine Afeku, who launched the event on behalf of the Senior Minister, Mr Yaw Osafo-Maafo, described the theme as “special and timely”.
She challenged the conference to find answers to questions such as: What should be done as a people to actualise the country’s potential of becoming a prosperous and self-reliant nation, taking into account the many resources that abound to us as a nation?
She explained that the Ghana Beyond Aid agenda was a call to harness the country’s resources for rapid economic and social transformation and not to isolate Ghana from the comity of nations and development partnerships.
Mrs Afeku further said although aid had played an important role in Ghana’s development, it needed more than aid to expedite its economic transformation.