The University of Ghana (UG) has announced a shift towards aligning its programmes to the real needs of industry.

Professor Samuel Kwame Offei, the Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Academic and Student Affairs), said this aimed to provide new skills and technologies to aid the growth of businesses.

He was speaking at a durbar and colloquium held as part of activities marking the 70th anniversary celebration of the university.

“Celebrating excellence, shaping futures” is the theme chosen for the event.

The university has turned out thousands of products, who are contributing in various ways to the nation’s development and remains a leader in research into societal problems.

It was founded as University College of the Gold Coast by ordinance on August 11, 1948, for the purpose of providing and promoting university education, learning and research.

It obtained its own charter and changed into the University of Ghana by an Act of Parliament (Act 79) on October 1, 1961.

Prof Offei said the celebration was an opportunity to “re-examine ourselves, take an inventory and audit our process to ensure that we correct our weaknesses and strengthen the process of delivery of our services”.

They should continue to work hard to ensure that they achieved that vision of “a go-to”, world class, research intensive university.

He underlined the need to explore innovative ways to raise resources to fund key activities - research, maintenance of infrastructure, teaching and development

The university depends largely on government subvention to fund majority of its activities, supplemented by internally generated funds, and he said, this had placed limitation on the activities that they would have wished to undertake.

“As a university, we are determined to expand our sources of internally generated funds, and it is in this regard that our 70th anniversary celebrations are dedicated to raising funds to support research and graduate studies.

A number of graduate students admitted into our programmes have either differed or declined their admissions because they have not been able to mobilize funds to finance their education.”

They were going to launch an ‘Endowment Fund’ and he called for all to contribute generously to it

Prof Michael Tagoe, acting Provost of the University’s College of Education, spoke of plans to establish Centres of Excellence and Chairs in Education and Communication Studies.