Madam Justina Owusu-Banahene, the Bono Regional Minister has launched ‘Strategic and Master Plans’ developed by authorities of the Sunyani Technical University to streamline the future development of the university.   

The Strategic Plan spells out the university's development in the next five years (2020/25), whilst the ‘Master Plan’ focuses on development of the institution for the next 40 years.   

Madam Owusu-Banahene said TVET was critical for sustainable national development saying the government was retooling and re-engineering technical and vocational education to align with modern trends. 

She said government had rolled out several infrastructure projects, including; upgrading of 35 National and Vocational Training Institutes (NVTIs), and colleges of education that specialised in technology. 

There is on-going refurbishment of existing infrastructure and construction of a new head office, 10 regional offices and five apprenticeship offices, she said and added government had also equipped 26 Trades and ICT equipment for the NVTI centres. 

Other interventions, she explained included; competency-based training programmes to cover 700 trainers across the 34 NTVIs; a major revision of the curricula of TVET schools to make them relevant to the needs of the nation’s evolving economy and providing 33 seater-bus for each of the NVTIs and pickup vehicles for the heads and regional offices and construction of 20 State-of-the-Art TVET institutions in all the regions.       

She commended the STU for its bold initiative in taking up the challenge of producing electrical vehicles under the university’s niche area of electrical and electronics engineering. 

“The Master plan is a broader development plan, which encompasses the current and future Strategic Plans to create the Technical University we want to be”, Professor Kwadwo Adinkrah-Appiah, the Vice Chancellor of the STU, stated. 

“We set out a new vision to build a Top-notch Technical University that provides skills-based education, with entrepreneurship training, to produce graduates ready for direct employment or setting up their own businesses, using a well-motivated human resource base and an enhanced academic environment. 

“Through our Niche Area and related programmes, we shall turn the institution into a Centre of Excellence to train and produce skilled graduates who will bring on board requisite expertise to the Energy, Artificial Intelligence, Agro-processing, Minerals processing, and the Construction Sectors to help change Ghana’s economy from Primary to Secondary, where manufacturing and exports will be the hallmark”.     

He assured the university would create an impact in helping to digitise Ghana’s economy and also participate fully in the on-going fourth industrial revolution. 

The University is on course to carry out its mandate of producing the appropriate skilled human capital for national, regional and global consumption with a focus on its Niche Area, Electrical and Electronics Engineering. 

Prof Adinkrah-Appiah said the STU would leave no stone unturned, in working through its niche area, to position the institution as a major research centre for the production of electric vehicles to help the country join world leaders in the manufacturing of Electric Vehicles to convert from internal combustion to electric vehicles by 2030. 

This goal is also enshrined in the Strategic Plan and the Master Plan documents, which had eight priority goals with 22 objectives and several strategies for achieving the university's vision.