A strategic partnership between universities and industries, under which students can only graduate after having done some practical attachment in relevant fields in industry, is being forged for implementation under the auspices of the Ministry of Education.
This is because producing graduates wholesale from tertiary institutions was not enough for job creation and industrialisation.
The Minister of Education, Mr Alex Tettey-Enyo, whose speech was read on his behalf at the commemoration of the African University Day in Accra on Wednesday, noted that the job market was looking for graduates with employable skills who could adapt to the changing world in the global economy and creatively become entrepreneurs in their own right.
He said the Ministry of Education was, therefore, seriously looking at the strategic partnership that was already in place, with the aim of strengthening it to include curriculum reforms.
He explained that under the curriculum reforms, industries could provide more opportunities for students by way of internship and attachment.
Mr Tettey-Enyo said he was delighted that the Association of African Universities (AAU) was providing a forum for engagement between universities and the productive sectors, saying that the ministry was looking forward to the creation of more of such fora to see how best the strategic partnership could be forged for the development of the whole continent.
He said universities had the important mission of assisting in the scientific, technological, economic and social development of their respective countries for the benefit of the whole of Africa.
The Chief Executive Officer of Yamson and Associates and renowned captain of industry, Mr I. E. Yamson, who delivered the keynote address on the theme, “African Universities: Linkages with the Productive Sector’’, said building linkages between African universities and businesses was critical to the solution of the problems facing the continent.
He said universities and businesses were both development drivers with the common goal of contributing to the transformation and prosperity of their respective countries.
He said African universities had to become a little more strategic and visionary, rather than allowing themselves to become overwhelmed by the challenges that confronted them.
He explained that presently African university graduates were not immediately employable because they were not equipped with employable skills and companies had to spend years of investment to equip them with those skills.
Mr Yamson said there was the need, therefore, to align the training of the manpower and workforce to the requirements of the productive sectors so that the graduates of the universities would not become incapacitated on the job market when they left the universities.
The President of the AAU, Prof. I. Oloyede, said the traditional role of universities of churning out graduates as ambassadors of the universities ought to blended with new roles as successful entrepreneurs.
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