Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications, Dr. Ing. Kenneth Ashigbey, is calling for a paradigm shift in the way higher education institutions train graduates.
To him, it is important that the universities should start talking about entrepreneurship – a key to tackling unemployment.
This, he said, will get the youth to start thinking of how to use knowledge from the university to create jobs and the future they want.
“Youth unemployment is really a major national security risk, not only for Ghana as a country but the whole of this sub-region of Africa; and therefore it is important that we have the universities talking about entrepreneurship.”
Dr. Ing. Kenneth Ashigbey made the call in an interview with the B&FT as guest speaker at the 12th graduation ceremony of Data Link Institute of Business and Technology (DLIBT) in Tema, on the theme ‘Higher educational institutions and the development of entrepreneurship; prospects and opportunities’.
With universities at the vanguard of promoting entrepreneurship, he indicated, students must take advantage and start to implement what entrepreneurial ideas they may have acquired toward creating their own business.
“We need to see the universities as crucibles to develop the next giants of businesses. This includes the private universities, who are contributing a great deal of developing human capital.
“We should be ready to offer national, regional and district projects to young entrepreneurs. We need to invest in them, allow them to fail forward and build their capacities. We should also have means of putting them together for national projects. The Ghana.Gov project is a good example by government that should be made the norm,” he said.
To the graduates of DLIBT, Dr. Ing. Ashigbey advises them to start exploiting the few entrepreneurial skills they have acquired while in school; build the businesses of the future; focus on needs and challenges they see around them; and seek further counsel and support from industries, government institutions and other sources in order to take advantage of opportunities emerging from the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
“You are also entering into the COVID-19-era world. You are not limited to space and location; language is no longer a barrier, you can translate in real time. The world has been reset and the opportunities are varied, new and evolving. If you don’t eat others’ lunch, they will come from elsewhere and take what belongs to you away. Take a good look at digitisation and how you can use technology to solve the problems which confront us,” he said.
Samuella Yaa Abraham, a 22-year-old computer science and information systems student, was adjudged the overall best student – making it three females winning this award for three consecutive years.
President of DLIBT, Professor Smile Gavua Dzisi, said with a student population of 630, about 204 students are passing out with Master’s degrees, Bachelor’s degrees and professional certificates.
Additionally, the institute has signed a collaboration with IIC University of Technology to run seven Master’s programmes and two PhD programmes. The institute is in an advanced stage of receiving approval from GTEC to commence.
