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The new Bolgatanga Technical University in the Upper East Region will produce quality and high standard solution oriented students who will significantly contribute to addressing societal challenges, to promote sustainable national development.

Professor Samuel Erasmus Alnaa, the Rector of the University, formerly a Polytechnic, stated that the institution would not relent on its principles of ensuring quality education and would be introducing new programmes to ensure that graduates from the institution were well grounded to offer quality solutions to addressing the pressing needs and everyday problems of the country.

He said students who would be channeled out from the University would not be unemployed graduates, but would be people with the needed skills and knowledge to create jobs for themselves and employ others, thereby solving the unemployment situation which had become a national security threat in the country.

“Even if you are looking up to somebody for a job, you have the readily available skills to be employed and the employer does not need to retrain you so that you can fit the work position effectively, the only training would probably be orientation. So we are going to do much more training of our students where the practical aspect would be done and the industrial dimension would be done,” the Rector assured.

Until early April, 2020, all polytechnics across the country with the exception of the Bolgatanga and Wa Polytechnics had been converted into technical universities. However, on April 2, Parliament of Ghana amended the Technical University Act of 2016, Act 922, to give university status to the two remaining polytechnics.

In an interview with the Ghana News Agency, Professor Alnaa, said the institution had not started operating as a technical University yet, but had started the transition process.

He said the institution had been offered a perfect opportunity to produce technocrats who would be self-reliant and have the technical know-how to contribute to the growth of Ghana’s economy.

Professor Alnaa said the University would leverage local content with emphasis on ecological agriculture to ensure mechanization and modernization of the sector for sustained productivity.

“Though our niche area is ecological agriculture, we will also be training students in other fields such as Mechanical Engineering, Automobile Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Medical Laboratory Technology, Banking and Finance and this will provide the students with the needed skills to significantly contribute to the growth and development of every sector of the economy.”

“We are also introducing five Bachelor of Technology Degree programmes, four-year degree programmes, including Agriculture Engineering, Ecological Agriculture, Hotel and Catering System Management, Civil Engineering and Building and Construction to be ran alongside the three-year HND programmes,” he added.

The Rector revealed that due to the delay in the conversion of the institution into the status of a university, it affected enrolment drastically as it dropped to about 1,500 in each academic year but expressed optimism that with the conversion, coupled with new innovative programmes set to be introduced, enrolment would increase.

Professor Alnaa further told GNA that processes had begun to have the Community based Health Planning Services (CHPS) Compound converted into a University Clinic to effectively render health services to the anticipated huge numbers of people.

Whilst commending all stakeholders who contributed in diverse ways to enable the institution attain the university status, Professor Alnaa stated, “in a few years to come Bolgatanga Technical University will be a worldwide recognized university, offering academic programmes that are just geared towards solving day to day problems.”