Universities Project Phase: The University of Ghana has begun the third phase of a project designed to increase students’ potential for creating profitable enterprises.
Dubbed “Innovation for African Universities Connecting Accra project”, The ultimate goal of the program being led by the university’s Office of Research, Innovation and Development (ORID) is to increase universities’ ability to engage and make significant contributions as major participants within the entrepreneurial ecosystem in their particular areas.
As a result, it aims to create a national ecosystem capable of innovation while offering venture assistance programs to participants and higher education institutions.
The University of Cape Coast, Impact Hub Accra, Imperial College London, and the British Council are partners on the initiative, which is funded by the British Council.
The University of Ghana Business School (UGBS), which will house participants under its Innovation and Incubation Center known as UGBS Nest, will carry out the initiative.
The initiative’s second phase, which finished in July 2022, was officially closed off at the inauguration event held yesterday in Accra.
Universities Project Phase
Instrumental
Prof. Felix Ankomah Asante, the pro-vice chancellor for research, innovation, and development at UG, hinted that the program had helped to alter the African entrepreneurial sector by supporting entrepreneurship, innovation, and research and development.
But, he pointed out that as the program reached its third phase, all of its participants and stakeholders were at a crucial juncture in its development, where they had to build on past triumphs and keep fostering innovation and expansion of the nation’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Acceptance
In an acceptance speech read on her behalf, Dr. Keren Naa Abeka Arthur, director of the UCC Design, Thinking and Innovation Hub, said that as the project’s newest participant, the university saw the partnership as an opportunity to jointly develop entrepreneurship support systems that took into account the distinctive features of public universities and the Ghanaian society.
Commendation
Akorfa Dawson, the British Council’s Programme Manager for Higher Education, praised the University of Ghana for establishing an innovation fund to support the program’s graduates and their companies after it was finished.
Moreover, she praised the institution for growing and broadening its influence to include other universities, noting that the nation had been chosen to host the project’s regional showcase.
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