Professor Philip Duku Osei, the Vice-Chancellor of the SD Dombo University of Business and Integrated Development Studies (SDD-UBIDS), has appealed to the British government to support the school to complete its library project.
He said the university had the potential to grow and absorb the growing number of people in the region and beyond that needed university education hence the need for modern facilities that would help provide the quality of training needed.
Prof. Osei made the appeal, when Harriet Thompson, the British High Commissioner to Ghana, visited the school as part of her familiarisation visit to the region.
“The library is my project to create a library in the northern part of Ghana that will be comparable to the University of Ghana Palm Library, but its completion has lagged schedule and it is an area, which I know the British cherish so much.
“Our university has the potential to grow and to absorb the teaming number of youngsters who need to be educated, and having a university, well equipped with wifi and every other facility you can think about, I think it will be an asset to the university”, Prof Osei explained.
He explained that he inherited eight other projects, which needed the support of the government to be completed to meet the need for lecture spaces and laboratories among others.
The Vice-Chancellor also indicated that the university had conceptualised two centres in the areas of the Africa Continental Free Area (AcFTA) and the centre for Disaster Risk Reduction to help combat the threat of climate change as part of its support for the development of the region and the country.
He also appealed to the British High Commissioner to consider scholarship opportunities for female students pursuing Information and Communication Technology at the university.
Prof. Emmanuel K. Derbile, the Pro Vice Chancellor of the SDD-UBIDS, observed that the university had the potential of being a part of the solutions to the myriad of challenges the region was facing.
He cited such challenges to include the threat of climate change, low agricultural production, the growing youth unemployment rate, and its attendant threat to national security.
Prof Derbile stressed the need for the British High Commission in Ghana to facilitate the SDD-UBIDS’s cooperation with universities in the UK and funding agencies to help unleash the full potential of the university.
For her part, H.E. Thompson, who was also the non-resident Ambassador to Togo, Benin, and Burkina Faso, said the visit to the school was part of her quest to explore partnership opportunities between universities in Ghana and other British educational institutions.
She said it was also to interact with the technocrats at the university to find out the business opportunities and future potentials of the region.
She noted that the British High Commission in Ghana had been collaborating with the Ministry of Education to help strengthen the educational system in Ghana and urged the students to be in constant touch with the British Council and its media handles for information on scholarship opportunities.
H.E. Thompson also encouraged the students to take advantage of the Chevening Scholarship programme as the application for the programme was currently ongoing.
