Let me start with a group of our own graduates who established the Unemployed Graduate Association of Ghana. That should have sent a message to us that there is something we need to add in order to make our graduates self-sustaining, by looking at the type and kind of knowledge/skill we were/are passing unto them.

In my view, the world has outlived our over-dependence of paper works from our students! Students/Graduates in other universities with similar challenges as we face are resorting to technology to fix everything, from health research, education, crime combating, corruption,  business development, human resource etc. We still do papers, isn’t it Prof?

Now back to the unemployment association something, we as the university could not fix that problem until a regime came to somehow “fixed” it. To be fair to Ghanaians and ourselves, we sincerely know there are thousands of our graduates out there who are doing things/jobs other than the skill we gave them, or on fields outside their area of study. Does that ring a bell?

How do we fix this so the over 50 thousand graduates and counting graduates we are working on them today don’t go without skills so wanted in this fast-changing world?

In my view, that’s what Senyo Hosi is talking about!

Now let me lose my cool!

Prof, you use a cell phone, the best you can buy, a Samsung, an I Phone or the latest Huawei with a “housing” or cover! You likely use earphones too. Prof, isn’t it shameful, an indictment on all of us that after 70 years, all we could showcase to the Ghanaian during our celebration is organized speeches and lectures?

Something as basic as earphones and phone covers, we have had to look on for it to be imported when you and I know that the direction technology has tilted in the world is going to be with us for over centuries? How many of our students/graduates have the skill to jump into creating these things? Elsewhere, these gadgets are produced by graduates from same universities with same challenges! Don’t say universities in Tokyo, Germany, UK or elsewhere don’t have their own problems! They do have them, just as we have, but they are firmly glued to the direction tech is taking us all!

That’s what Senyo Hosi is talking about!

Prof, you don’t see that we are losing our relevance in some respect? Look at this! Schools of Performing Arts in almost all our universities across the country were established to ensure Ghanaians have, among other things, quality entertainment. But, what do we see?

Today, you and I are paying for DSTV and other networks whose contents are prepared from outside Ghana. Why? Because our Schools of Performing Arts are simply out of touch of the times!

For how long should Ghanaians wait on Uncle Ebo Whyte to produce the next arts, the kind that is largely given to students? The results? We have deliberately or otherwise given room to channels that have succeeded in using a foreign prepared content; one Kunkum Bagya, to change the transport, and to some extent, relationship culture of some Ghanaians under four years! Whether good or bad, it is clear India wouldn’t have used just four years to make the gains it has made exporting it “Pragya or Aboboyaa” so in Ghana. Prof, our Schools of Performing Arts are not seeing the times, to equip graduates with skills to produce content to entertain Ghanaians. We are losing it Prof!  That’s what Senyo Hosi is talking about!

Today, almost every interchange in this country is constructed or built by foreigners, with the most recent being the “Circle Dubai”. What myself and Professor Gyampo failed to realize is that it was a university in Brazil that has been able to produce construction engineers with muscles to win contracts that our grads are to win. Our graduate’s competences over the years have got the state not to have confidence in them, to hand them jobs of this magnitude. When was the last time we saw the Chinese government resort to Ghanaians for a construction project in their country?

That’s what Senyo Hosi is talking about!

As we speak, Ghana will be sending many people into people’s homes and on streets for the 2020 Population and Housing Census! Since the counting of people started, has it crossed the mind of Prof Gyampo and lecturers of our kind to help train students who will develop apps or a tech that can do the counting work with less hustle at a cheaper cost and great efficiency than we have now? That’s what Senyo Hosi is talking about!

Shamefully, as a country, we do not have any effective system to record every single new-born. If we did, with an app or a tech to collate all of them for planning purposes on a regular or yearly basis, we wouldn’t have been comfortable to stick to the 10-year cycle, used over 2,000 years ago at the time of Mary and Joseph in Biblical times when our elections are done every four years!

My dear Prof, you will agree that this ten-year counting cycle is long a duration to match the ever-moving fast societies of our times. Are our students given the skills needed to do such breakthroughs? If not, isn’t aspects of our lecturing losing their relevance? And by the way, who developed the app or tech being used for the Ghana Card? UG grad?

That’s what Senyo Hosi is talking about!

I want to end, but let me bring this to our collective attention. The skills we are passing on to our students are supposed to help fix problems of society, Isn’t it? But, we were in this country when floods swallowed over a hundred and 150 persons on June 3, 2015.

Till date, as a university that we tout as the best in the country, what have our graduate engineers been doing? we still don’t have a plan that could transform the Odaw River to the kind that people can enjoy its cool breeze and dance to their favourite classicals as we enjoyed in Budapest! Don’t tell me there is a plan but people in government are not doing it. If you say so, I will ask where our skills we pass unto our graduates should end. certainly not at preparing and submitting the plan! Do we equip our engineers with political negotiation skills to win the hearts of politicians to commit to such projects?  Are they supposed to end where the plan is tabled or when it is actionable?

That’s what Senyo Hosi, in my view, is talking about!

So Prof, let us pardon Senyo, that’s even if he erred, and look at the issues of our relevance to the Ghanaian challenges, for we can be the Silicon Valley of Africa!

By: Professor E. A Sianr (UG)