The Indian High Commissioner to Ghana, Manish Gupta has paid a familiarisation visit to Takoradi Technical University, TTU, with the objective to strengthen educational ties between India and Ghana. The visit also aimed to acquaint the High Commissioner with TTU’s academic programmes, student population, how the University fits into the global educational space, its partnerships with other universities among others. Vice Chancellor of TTU, Rev. Prof. John Frank Eshun, presented to the commissioner a brief history of the university, students’ population, the university’s collaboration with industry, and its vision as a University.

“Our niche area is in Oil and Gas. Our vision as a University is to be recognized for excellence, and societal relevance. Going forward, we are trying to also foster relationship between industry. We have a lot of collaboration with industry that our students from time to time go to industry to learn on the field. We believe industry is the extension of classroom. Now we are practicing competence growth programme, and we have the whole semester in the industry to study.”, he elaborated.

Prof. Eshun while acknowledging India’s strong background in ICT, pleaded with the Commissioner to provide the University with ICT experts to help strengthen education in IT in the University.

“Indians are strong in ICT so we have some relationship with India and I believe your coming into office will strengthen the collaboration between India and Ghana. We believe ICT is the way to go now because of the previous pandemic, so currently we are also trying to come with digitalization policy where we will be able to leverage on our education and all our delivery on ICT. So, since India is the backbone of ICT, I know you have some experts that can also come and help us strengthen our education in ICT. Try and open doors for us to be able to leverage on what you have there so that we can improve upon our system here” he pleaded.

The India High Commissioner, Manish Gupta, spoke on areas of possible collaboration that TTU can take advantage.

 “Now we have funded over 50,000 startups over the past 10 years. We are strong in ICT so almost half of them are in the ICT sector. As a result, I know there are some experiences that we can share with you. On the academic side we have some programmes that we collaborate with some countries especially students who want to pursue masters and PhDs and these are really India institutes. We therefore hope to have such collaborations with your University”, he said.

Pro Vice Chancellor of TTU, Prof. Victor Kweku Bondzie Micah, highlighted the University’s efforts to providing students with hands on training which will benefit their future employment endeavours.

“We are doing our best as a University in trying to get students to understand the importance of doing hands on training and also being part of the training so that after school they will be on their own, employ themselves and others as well. I think so far so good, being in existence for the past eight years as a Technical University, we have done some studies to see how best our students are faring. It looks quite good, and we are hoping that as time goes on, we will do more of such studies to see where our students are and how they are doing. I’m very sure in a year or two we will see much improvement in where they are and what they are doing,” he said.

Prof. Micah also expressed hope for collaborations with India in terms of technological studies for students.

The High Commissioner and the Vice Chancellor exchanged souvenirs and was led on a tour of the University.