A professor at the University of Ghana, Legon, Mrs Vera Ogeh Fiador, has assumed the position of President of the University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG).
It is the first by a female in the association's history.
It follows her election on August 5, 2025.
Prof. Fiador takes over from Prof. Mamudu A. Akudugu after his two-year tenure.
Who is Prof Vera Fiador?
Prof. (Mrs.) Vera Ogeh Fiador (née Soli) first achieved a historic milestone by becoming Ghana’s first female full Professor of Finance.
Her promotion marked a significant breakthrough for women in academia and the finance profession in Ghana.
Prof. Fiador headed the Department of Finance at the University of Ghana Business School (UGBS), and teaches both undergraduate and postgraduate courses.
Her academic expertise spans corporate finance, corporate governance, gender diversity, enterprise risk management, and environmental and social risk management.
She holds a PhD with a specialisation in Finance from the University of Cape Town's Graduate School of Business, South Africa.
Prof. Fiador, with numerous peer-reviewed publications, has made significant contributions to research and consultancy. She has consulted for several reputable organisations, including the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), International Finance Corporation (IFC), SNV Netherlands Development Organisation, Overseas Development Institute, Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC), and the Ghana Enterprises Agency (GEA), formerly National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI).
She has also conducted capacity-building programmes for banks and financial institutions across Ghana.
Beyond academia, Prof. Fiador has demonstrated a strong commitment to public service and the corporate sector.
Prof. Fiador is the first of four children born to Ebenezer Dornu Soli and Victoria Aku Soli (née Tettey). Vera Fiador was born in James Town, British Accra, where she also spent the better part of her formative years. She is married to Daniel Fiador, a lawyer, and they are blessed with four children.
Acceptance speech
Graphic Online's Emmanuel Bonney reports from Aburi that in her acceptance speech at the 22nd UTAG Biennial Congress at Aburi in the Eastern Region after the swearing in of the new UTAG executive on Tuesday [Sept 30, 2025], Prof. Fiador said, "if a nation is a living body, then its universities are the beating heart and curious mind."
As academics, she said UTAG members refined the raw ore of human potential into the alloy of national progress.
"We test ideas against evidence, translate curiosity into cures, turn questions into industries, and we shape the character of a generation that will outlive us all," she said.
In essence, she said academics were the blueprint that was constantly re-run and reprinted to produce the human capital to drive national development.
Contract
Yet, she said the social contract between academia and society had frayed over the years.
"We see it in shrinking public trust, in the casual dismissal of expertise as “too known”, in the treatment of scholars as “out of touch”, “ too theoretical etc,” in the chronic underinvestment that treats knowledge as a cost center rather than a growth engine," she said.
Too often, Prof. Fiador said, the very people tasked to build tomorrow’s Ghana - the academics, were asked to do so with yesterday’s tools and very little funding alongside a lack of autonomy for their institutions and governing councils.
Reality
The stark reality, she said, was that most academics retired or would retire to face old-age poverty, unless something drastic happens to their conditions of service, "a dream I hope to see materialize or crystallize before I leave office."
Lecturers' conditions of service, Prof. Fiador said, were such that they failed miserably in attracting the critical mass of the young minds and recruits needed to replace others.
"In Ghana today, young minds meant for research and academia would rather do private consulting like the KPMGs, EYs, PwCs, and industry because it pays better. In some cases, they find themselves in buying and selling goods from China and Dubai, because it pays way better, and or in other cases, they end up in politics/parliament because that will ensure at least a V8 and ex-gratia every four years, an amount a PhD holding academic cannot even dream of after decades of relentless service," he emphasised.
Service condition
Indeed, a nation with improperly aligned conditions of service for the sections meant to drive growth, she said would be faced with misaligned human capital allocation that worked against national development.
In essence, she said such a nation would find its human resource in areas that paid and not necessarily in sectors that grew the economy…
"Today, I want to ignite a new paradigm of respect for academia—as a force to be reckoned with; a partner you can count on; a compass in stormy times. Not by pleading for prestige or nostalgia, but by setting out a bold, practical, measurable agenda that makes the work of universities and academics unmistakably consequential to everyday life.
"Respect for academics is not vanity. Respect for academics is the oxygen that lets good ideas breathe," she said.
She said when respect for academia was absent, nations ran on superstition and slogans and that when respect was present, nations compounded knowledge like capital.
World class
"Currently, as we speak, we have world-class minds working in less-than-world-class conditions. We have pockets of excellence surrounded by deserts of neglect. We celebrate graduations, yet underfund the very research that creates jobs for graduates. We proclaim STEM and digital futures while libraries, journals, and connectivity budgets plead for breath," she said.
That, for her, she said, was a leadership challenge and a societal challenge.
Prof. Fiador said that within the association, the time was now, as members called for transparent and responsive leadership; fair and sustainable conditions of service; protection of academic freedom; and unity of purpose.
To the nation, she said it required a renewed covenant: respect the academy not as ornament but as infrastructure.
"These priorities have been voiced before by leaders who have offered courageous, collaborative, and credible leadership; we must now make them the operating system of our public life.
As she took up the mantle and the responsibility that had been placed on her, she looked forward to seeing respect for academia that was earned by visible service, translation of members' research publications into impactful outcomes, and freedom of scholars to critique issues, free from partisan politics, and backed by evidence.
Again, she said she looked forward to human conditions worthy of the mission given to UTAG, "given that demanding excellence from academics while normalizing economic insecurity of academics is insincerity and pretense from the powers that be.
Graduates
"A case in point is asking universities to produce globally competitive graduates with annual tuition fees that are far below what creches and kindergartens pay per annum and subject to the dictates of the Fees Act. I think the time has come to rethink a national baseline for academic working conditions: predictable career pathways, research time that is protected from administrative sprawl, competitive compensation, safe campuses, and modern infrastructure," she said.
In short, she said there could not be world-class outcomes on subsistence inputs. "There is a saying that when you wish to speak to God, speak to the wind. I believe there are strong winds in this room today………to take our requests to the ears of those who can change things."
From the government, she said members would ask for reliable, multi-year funding; a firewall for academic freedom; partnership, not micromanagement, and procurement rules that fit research timelines.
"From Industry: We ask that you bring us your wicked problems; co-fund labs; host fellows; license innovations responsibly; and mentor student founders. Indeed, a lot of the business models that we use are created in the Harvards and Yales: it’s a collaboration, it’s time to create ours, fit to our contexts."
Account
The media, she said, must not only hold them to account—but also help translate complex findings and issues without sensationalism. She said they must elevate nuance over noise.
From citizens and students, she said, they must demand evidence, celebrate curiosity, and reject the cynicism that says knowledge does not matter.
"If knowledge indeed didn’t matter, then the likes of Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerbrg, Kwame Despite etc, all touted as dropping out of school but making it, would not be recruiting top engineers with critical thinking skills to grow their ideas…for indeed while ideas and visions are not limited to the schooled, the translation of a vision like a skyscrapper into a building that does not come crushing down during construction is the forte of the mathematically grounded engineer who is endowed with the relevant knowledge," she said.
Prof. Fiador asked members of the association to ensure that they worked together to make the UTAG impossible to ignore—"not with noise, but with usefulness. Let us be the movement that marries integrity, courage, and commitment to results people can feel."
