UK Royal Academy, KNUST partner to train engineering students.

The Technology Consultancy Centre (TCC) of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), in partnership with the Royal Academy of Engineers (RAE-UK), will in the next two years train a total of 64 students from the technical universities in the country in skills development and manufacturing.

In all, the RAE is investing a total of 200,000 pounds into the project for the two-year period.

The beneficiaries will be selected from four technical universities, namely Cape Coast, Ho, Kumasi and Koforidua, with KNUST serving as the host.

Objective

The project, which is dubbed ‘Manufacturing Hub for Closing the Skills Gap between Academia and Industry,’ is under the Royal Academy of Engineering-Ghana Higher Education Partnership in Sub-THE Technology consultancy Centre (TCC) of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), in partnership with the Royal Academy of Engineers (RAE-UK), will in the next two years train a total of 64 students from the technical universities in the country in skills development and manufacturing.

In all, the RAE is investing a total of 200,000 pounds into the project for the two-year period.

The beneficiaries will be selected from four technical universities, namely Cape Coast, Ho, Kumasi and Koforidua, with KNUST serving as the host.

It is aimed at developing shared course materials in the design and manufacturing of agriculture equipment for use by farmers, among other things.

Outcomes

At the opening ceremony of the training programme for the students and faculty members from the participating universities, the Vice Chancellor of KNUST, Professor Kwasi Obiri Danso, in a speech for him by the former Provost of the College of Engineering, Professor Samuel Innocent Kofi Ampadu, said he was grateful to RAE-UK for sponsoring the training of the project which would link academia with industry to provide market-driven solutions.

He said under the project, the academia would work with the industry to produce a high calibre of graduates with knowledge and expertise to support the industry and socioeconomic development of the

Ghana and beyond.

Prof. Danso said the collaboration with industry was critical for skills development, adoption of project outcomes and promotion of entrepreneurship and
innovation commercialisation.

According to the VC, the project was expected to increase industrial support for engineering capstone projects, increase job placement for engineering graduates, improve young engineers ability to function effectively in multidisciplinary teams and to enhance the curricular of the participating institutions.

He said the project also intended to increase the self confidence of the students for design and manufacturing and to produce students who were
well equipped.

“With such project outcomes such as these, the least we expect is the enhanced suitability of our academic programmes to industry, students gaining relevant work experience, with the industry having a pool of employable candidates to select from, thus spending less resources intraining newly hired employees,” he said.

Climate change

Professor Rick Greenough from the University of de Montfort University in Leicester (UK) observed that the advent in climate change required that industries moved towards clean and renewable energy and that would also require new machinery and equipment that were energy efficient.