The University of Cape Coast (UCC) is seeking partnership with African Diaspora investors to expand the university’s enterprise development agenda.

According to the University, the phenomenon where students complete their courses at the various tertiary institutions and rely on government for employment should be a major concern to everyone.

Speaking at a donation of educational materials by the African Diaspora Development Institute, Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast, Prof. Rosemond Boohene, called for partnerships to modernise Agric and deepen innovation and entrepreneurship among students to promote food security and reduce employment.

The Pro-Vice-Chancellor shared the Vice-Chancellor’s vision strategy, which she believes could move the university on the path of entrepreneurship and broadly on enterprise development.

She is seeking partnership to overturn the situation where students complete their university education and go job-hunting.

For her, the university's path is to make the students innovative and creative thinkers capable of becoming employers right after school.

“So, in the Vice-Chancellor’s vision strategy, we have ‘championing entrepreneurship’ as one of our key focuses. We have, thus, established a design-thinking and innovation hub in our university to help us in this direction. We want to develop the creative and innovative ideas of students so that by the time they leave here, they’re not going to be job seekers, but they are also going to be job creators,” she said.

Prof. Boohene believes the modernisation of Agric is key towards achieving food security, and the university has been at the forefront of innovations and initiatives that would help harness the interest of people in Agric. She pled for partnership with the diaspora community to make it a viable enterprise.

She stated: “We are also looking at the modernisation of Agriculture. Now, we are talking about food security, and we have a big land. Is there a way our brothers and sisters from the diaspora can partner with the university? So, we want to go into enterprise development. So, we could meet and discuss fruitful collaboration between our university and the ADDI and our brothers and sisters from the diaspora.”

Chairman of the African Diasporan Development Initiative (ADDI) in Ghana, Nana Obokese Ampah I, says the idea of the Wakanda City of Return is not only to build a smart city that would make the Africans in the diaspora return home but also to strengthen the education, health and commerce of the local people in Ghana and the University of Cape Coast would play a crucial role in their establishment.

“The whole idea is for us to build a city to welcome our brothers and sister back home. So, it’s going to be like a diaspora community, and that’s what we call the Wakanda City of Return. The first phase is to focus on capacity building and how an institution like the University of Cape Coast is going to be supported using the diaspora population,” he stated.

He added, the President and Founder of the ADDI, Ambassador Chihombori Quao, was poised to build the Africa that every African wants.

He revealed a surgery centre will be built at the Cape Coast Teaching Hospital, where major surgeries were hitherto not done in Ghana.

“We are going to build a surgery centre at the Cape Coast Teaching Hospital where specialised surgeries would be done. As of now, we have a container of medical supplies worth $300,000 coming right now to support the health sector in Cape Coast, as part of the Wakanda One City of Return.”

“We are going to focus on how we would support use the College of Distance Education (CODE) to attract the Diasporan community so their programs would be internationally marketed. We want to work closely with the university because the Cape Coast area is going to be the seat of the whole thing. This is very critical to us.”

Tufuhen of Atonkwa, Nana Kwamena Kra, prayed the Wakanda One City of Return would not be seen as establishing a gated community on the African continent but as a tool to accelerate the development of the African continent.

The donation forms part of the African Diaspora Development Institutes commitment to partner with existing institutions to support the people.