The University of Ghana, Legon, through the Students Financial Aid Office, has awarded scholarships to over 500 students for the 2022/2023 academic year, including a number of students with disabilities.
The initiative is to embrace equity and provide opportunities for economically disadvantaged students and expected to motivate and inspire the beneficiaries to achieve their full potential.
Professor Nana Aba Appiah Amfo, the Vice-Chancellor of the University, said this at the 13th Congregation ceremony for students who completed their undergraduate and graduate programmes for the 2021/2022 academic year.
A total of 11,711 students graduated from all four Colleges and the School of Graduate Studies.
The number is made up of 2,918 graduate students, made up of 102 PhDs and 2,816 Master’s students, 8,331 Bachelor’s degrees, and 462 diplomas.
She commended the donors, who made financial contributions to ensure that the scholarships were made available to students, who would otherwise have been unable to have tertiary education.
The Professor called on other donors to come on board to assist the University to ensure that financial difficulties did not serve as a hindrance to students.
She said the University’s enrolment figure for the 2022/2023 academic year was 17, 453, made up of 49 per cent of males and 51 per cent females.
On student accommodation, the Vice-Chancellor said the University was committed to providing quality education to all students, including comfortable and affordable accommodation to ensure sound academic experience.
She said the construction of a 904-bed capacity hostel facility, located within the University campus and supported by the Infrastructural Development Fund, was progressing steadily.
“Additionally, in 2022, the sod was cut for the construction of a PhD apartment block dedicated to PhD students enrolled at the University of Ghana.
“The project is funded by savings on our Carnegie-sponsored capacity building projects and will provide the much-needed accommodation for PhD students,” she said.
She said the GK-IMPACT Project, a collaboration between the University of Ghana, KOICA, UNICEF, and MEST, was making significant strides in advancing entrepreneurship and innovation in the ICT sector.
The Vice-Chancellor said the GK-IMPACT Project had allocated US$9 million through KOICA to construct a building that would provide software and hardware for ICT innovation and research.
She said the University was the first public University to develop a gender policy to ensure that all stakeholders were treated equally and had access to the same facilities, opportunities, and treatment, regardless of their sex.
The University is also the first in Ghana to develop a Sexual Harassment Policy.
On special initiatives, she said the University had implemented the “One Student, One Laptop” project, which had already provided 120 needy students with laptops and would soon give out a second batch of laptops of up to 200.
Nana Dwemoh Benneh, the Chief Executive Officer of Universal Merchant Bank, encouraged the graduands to take advantage of the digital space to maximize their potential.
That, he said, was critical because the rapid development of technology had transformed every socio-economic life in society.
“You need to be curious, adventurous, imaginative, and utilise all the available platforms to achieve your career development,” he said.
Mr Collins Dotse Tsakpo, the best graduating student from the School of Education and Leadership, thanked the management of the University for the good learning experience.
He assured that they would uphold the University’s values of integrity and truth in their field of work to impact society positively.
Hannah Ayamba won the award for the best graduating student from the School of Continuing and Distance Education.
