Head of the Centre for Settlements Studies, Professor Divine Kwaku Ahadzie, has delivered an inaugural lecture on the topic “Winning the Real Impact Award: A Reflexive Journey through Housing, Environment, and Community Flood Resilience.”
Given the significance of the event, the Registrar, Andrews Kwasi Boateng, said inaugural lectures are one of the most revered practices in world-class universities which symbolises an important achievement in an academic's career. Mr. Boateng said the event provides official recognition of their promotion to the rank of full professor. Inaugural lectures also offer a rare opportunity for newly appointed professors to introduce themselves and present an overview of their research contributions in their chosen disciplines to the academic community. It serves as a platform for celebrating the academic achievements of newly appointed professors in front of colleagues, family, friends, mentors, and the community. The KNUST, in keeping with best practices around the world, has made inaugural lectures a cardinal point of academic life and experience. As an institution of higher learning with the responsibility of solving societal problems, the lectures afford us the opportunity to highlight what has been done in terms of ground-breaking research to the national and international community.
In his lecture, Professor Ahadzie said the housing sector in this country persuades what he calls elitism in the literature with the most marginalised communities living in slums. He noted that housing is the single largest sector of the construction industry in Ghana with major challenges. However, it has received very limited coverage in our educational curriculum, which to him is an anomaly. He noted, at the tertiary level, urban development programmes that run housing modules. For construction courses across the country, there is nothing on housing and the environmental impact, hence, he called for the anomaly to be addressed urgently.
According to Professor Ahadzie Housing is a basic need and without it, we cannot accomplish the other needs as outlined in the hierarchy of needs. He drew attention to the fact that in Ghana, housing is not seen as a basic need by the government as evidenced by the silence in the constitution. He stated that as we are having a national discourse on the review of the constitution “This is the time to challenge politicians to state their position of making housing a right in the constitution. He also lamented that we have our approach to housing affordability wrong as the country continues to deliver houses for those who can already afford them. He said, we have to properly define affordability to target those who are really in need and not those who can pay for it and are already over-housed.” He also recounted that housing has been seen as a welfare scheme across the globe since the Second World War. He, therefore, charged the media to ask the tough question of the politicians of what welfare scheme is being operated in Ghana by the government. He added that if we are not addressing housing as a welfare scheme then it means we are not interested in addressing Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11.
On the road to winning the Impact Award, he revealed that though it is a requirement for academicians to publish journals, he went a step further in converting his research findings into media-friendly language for public consumption. He highlighted the requirements for the Emerald Real Impact Award and the background of the experts who constitute the panel. The criteria for the award are commitment beyond academia, impact agenda, SDGs, collaborative research, and innovative approach.
The backgrounds of the judges were experts in impact literacy, knowledge exchange, research funding, and library and scholarly communications.
In being declared the winner for driving the impact agenda category the judges noted that; “By drawing upon participatory and knowledge co-producing research techniques, Professor Ahadzie’s work has fostered active and ongoing engagement in local communities, affected by inadequate housing and wastewater management and the persistent threat of flooding. In addition to publishing his findings in academic journals, he communicates his works to wider communities, by adapting them to media-friendly articles. This in turn has led to greater public awareness of the concept of housing and its implications for environmental sustainability in Ghana. The statement from the Emerald Group read “The housing project analysed the current housing crisis and used these findings to create awareness in the media to generate public interest and elevate the conversation around public housing into national discourse in the run-up to Ghana’s general election. The research was linked to SDGs 3, 6 and 11. The Head of the Centre for Settlement Studies maintains that the housing supply in Ghana is a joke compared to what our peers are delivering on the continent. He, therefore, called for the need for the state to make public, Ghana’s housing philosophy and declare the state’s position on its housing welfare scheme.
The right to housing must be considered for inclusion in the constitution, he maintained.
On flood resilience, he said Accra has significant problems regarding flood protection and awareness and requires an integration of different measures to potentially solve the problem. He proposed a large-size retention basin in the Odaw-Korle catchment based on a study undertaken with his collaboration at the Technical University of Munich, Germany. He indicated the large retention basin has the potential of reducing flood risk in Accra by 30% and translates to about five million dollars ($ 5,000,000.00) in saving annually. He said, “The 21st-century approach to flood risk management is to build community resilience and government effort must be directed towards upscaling conversations on this. He further advocated the inclusion of Assemblymen, MPs, and Chiefs to have a big stake in engendering community resilience initiatives through a common vision” and called for a public discussion on what he termed the “flood footprint.”
On the impact agenda, he suggested the need for the Parliamentary Committee on Environment, Science and Technology to lead the national discourse. “We need scientific advisors in our governance system even at the district assembly level.” He also called for an impact agenda policy to drive research agenda in tertiary and research institutions in the country.
The Housing and flood expert informed the gathering that since winning the award, he has gained public recognition which has increased his public engagements including being a keynote speaker at the International Conference on Responsible Tourism and Hospitality ICRTH2021 in Malaysia. He said he spoke on driving the impact agenda at the conference. He was also invited to be a Judge for the Young Researchers Award by the Emerald Group of Southeast Asia. Recently, he has been appointed Associate Editor of the Journal of Urban Planning and Development by the American Society of Civil Engineers. In addition to these, he is part of a team that has just won a four-year DAAD grant for the BRIDGE project- Building Resilient Communities through Integrating Climate Change Adaptation with the SDGs in University Education and Research. This is a collaboration between KNUST and RWTH Aachen.
In terms of reflections, Prof. Ahadzie said, he wished he had started the impact agenda earlier in his career as it requires some youthful exuberance and advised young faculty to begin to drive the impact agenda early enough and not leave it to later stages of their academic career. Professor Ahadzie is developing a handbook on flood risk management from contributors across the world to be published by Taylor and Francis.
The Vice Chancellor of KNUST, Professor (Mrs.) Rita Akosua Dickson on behalf of the University commended the Lecturer on his work throughout his career as an academic at both national and international levels and his contributions to the housing and settlement sector.