President John Agyekum Kufuor on Saturday urged the University for Development Studies (UDS) to take advantage of its geographical location to research into agriculture, medicine and other socio-cultural issues that would promote peace and development in northern Ghana. He said among the many socio-cultural issues that the university could research into were HIV/AIDS and chieftaincy disputes that were prevalent in all parts of the country. President Kufuor made the call in an address read for him by Papa Owusu Ankomah, the Minister of Education, Science and Sports, at the seventh Congregation of the UDS in Tamale. Some 750 students were awarded degrees and diplomas. President Kufuor said the government had envisioned the UDS to rise to the occasion with simple and "down to earth problem solving approaches" to improve upon the productive capacities of subsistence farmers as a poverty alleviation strategy. President Kufuor commended the University for being firm in the academic assessment of students noting that the UDS had dealt swiftly and resolutely with examination malpractices. He encouraged the university administration to keep it up as the best way of ensuring that its products remained genuinely competitive in the job market. The President said efforts were being made to upgrade the Tamale Teaching Hospital. He said this would enable students of the UDS School of Medicine and Health Sciences to do their clinical training at the hospital instead of going to either the School of Medical Sciences at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) or the University of Ghana Medical School for the same purpose. President Kufuor commended the French government for establishing French Language Centres at all UDS campuses to assist the university to achieve its bilingual status to facilitate the integration of the West African sub-region. He congratulated the grandaunts and urged them to demonstrate creativity and innovation by venturing into the private sector with the entrepreneurial skills they had acquired. Professor John Kaburise, Vice-Chancellor of the UDS, reiterated his appeal to the government to release the seed money to the university to undertake its infrastructure development. He said since the inception of the UDS, most of its campuses were virtually without any existing infrastructure, adding: "Increased funding would enable us to train the much needed high-calibre manpower for the country's development". The Vice-Chancellor announced that the university would soon outdoor new programmes at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, explaining that the objectives of the courses were to make students have more choices. On development, he said the GETFund had so far spent over 139.5 billion cedis to provide various infrastructure facilities at all the campuses of the UDS. He said the Tamale campus for instance, was gradually taking shape with the construction of a library, a laboratory and an ICT centre. Professor Kaburise said additionally, the government was constructing a hostel complex on the Tamale campus that would be handed over to the university after the "CAN 2008" soccer tournament. The metropolis is co-hosting the event. He said at the Navrongo campus, a female hostel had been completed and a multi-purpose building was also in use as a library in addition to a French language centre and an Internet cafe. On the Wa campus, he said the construction of a multi-purpose lecture theatre was on course. Professor Kaburise appealed to estate developers to build hostels for students' accommodation around Bamahu, near Wa, to help ease the serious accommodation problem facing the WA campus.