The College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CoHSS) of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in collaboration with the VolkswagenStiftung and Centre for Interdisciplinary African Studies has held a conference on the Africa Initiative of the Volkswagen Foundation on Knowledge Sharing for Tomorrow. The event which is on the theme: “Cooperative Research Projects on Sub-Saharan Africa” will run from the 26th to 29th March, 2018.
Opening the Conference, Reverend Professor Charles Ansah, Pro Vice-Chancellor, said that KNUST has plans to increase its post graduate training enrolment and cannot solely do it without the support of its collaborators. He was therefore grateful to the People of Germany for their continuous support to the University. He pledged management’s support to the sustenance of the collaboration between the two institutions.
Dr. Silke Betram of the Volkswagen Foundation, said the Foundation is an independent one with overall funding volume of around 150 million euros per year, which makes it Germany‘s largest private research funding foundation. She continued that the Foundation provides funds only to academic institutions. Since it was founded more than 50 years ago, the Volkswagen Foundation has allocated more than 4.7 billion euros in support of over 30,000 projects.
According to Dr. Betram, in accordance with its statutes, the Volkswagen Foundation supports the humanities and social sciences as well as science and technology in higher education and research by providing targeted impulses through its funding. It also supports junior researchers and fosters cooperation between researchers across the borders of disciplines, cultures and national states.
Provost of the CoHSS, Professor Imoro Braimah, Keynote Speaker, said social scientists continue to create knowledge and build on existing one but if social science research is to create knowledge for tomorrow’s people, they should take note that at the same time there are complicated social issues.
Professor Braimah continued that Ghana has a sanitation problem in spite of abundant technological knowledge in solving problems, which has been with us for a long time. According to him, scientists have not been able to offer solutions to these problems, which are attitudinal ones and challenged social scientists to solve attitudinal issues.
Professor Braimah asked social scientists of high interest rates from the Banks and its socioeconomic consequences. He noted that there abounds sufficient knowledge to tackle our problems and that knowledge created by social scientists should be able to solve societal problems and also ensure social implementation of knowledge.
He cited Corruption and said almost every institution in Ghana is perceived to be corrupt. In order to tackle it, religious leaders, traditional leaders and all stakeholders are to help find lasting solutions as there are more social problems than technological problems. He hoped the support from the Volkswagen Foundation will be effectively utilized by selected beneficiaries to solve social problems.
