Sam Jonah has thrown his full support behind the newly installed Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast, Professor Aheto, urging him to pursue bold reforms and promising to stand by him when resistance comes.

Addressing the university during the installation ceremony on August 1, Sir Sam Jonah said the new Vice-Chancellor had not been appointed to preserve the status quo but to transform the institution for a rapidly changing world shaped by artificial intelligence.

“You will be criticised. Reformers always are. When they come for you, send them to me. I have spent 50 years being told what could not be done, usually by people standing on ground I later mined.”

Earlier, he set the tone for his address by telling Professor Aheto that the task ahead would be anything but easy.

“I have not come here to hand you keys. I have come to hand you a storm.”

He said the university could no longer define itself simply as a place that transmits knowledge because technology had fundamentally changed that role.

“For the first time in human history, the cleverest entity in the room may not be a person. The scarcity of answers is over.”

According to him, universities that continue to focus only on delivering information risk becoming obsolete because “a machine now does that better, faster and cheaper than we ever will.”

Instead, he argued, universities must focus on producing graduates with practical skills, sound judgment and the ability to solve real-world problems.

“The world our graduates are entering will not ask them what they know. It will ask them what they can do.”

Sir Sam Jonah lamented that too many African graduates leave university with theoretical knowledge but little practical competence.

“A nation of people who know, but cannot do, will remain a poor nation — beautifully certificated, and poor.”

He challenged UCC to lead a new direction by establishing Africa’s first degree-awarding faculty dedicated to vocational education, where academic qualifications would be matched with practical competence.

He also called for stronger partnerships with industry and proposed project-based learning, AI innovation clubs and mentorship from Ghanaian experts abroad.

Addressing Professor Aheto directly, Sir Sam Jonah urged him to protect the university’s academic standards while breaking down the barriers between theory and practice.

“Guard the standards of this University with your life; a devalued degree helps no one.”

“Break the wall between the academy and the workshop; let no programme survive that cannot answer the question, ‘What can your graduate do?’”

He said lecturers with practical expertise should enjoy the same respect as traditional academics.

“Put a lecturer of practice — a master welder, a master nurse, a master farmer — beside every professor of theory, and pay them both with honour.”

Sir Sam Jonah concluded by urging the university community to seize what he described as a defining moment in history.

“The old model of the university is passing. A new one is waiting to be built. Someone will build it. Let it be built here, by us.”

He ended with a final charge to the new Vice-Chancellor: “The storm is yours now. So is the honour. Lead us.”