Ambassador of Lebanon to Ghana, His Excellency Maher Kheir as part of the Lebanese Community Scholarship Programme has presented prizes to five distinguished students at the University of Ghana during the Vice Chancellor’s Ceremony in honour of Academic Award Winners for the 2021/2022 Academic year.

The colourful ceremony happened in the presence of the Vice Chancellor of the University Professor Nana Aba Appiah Amfo, the Lebanese Ambassador H.E Mr. Maher Kheir, the Registrar Mrs Emelia Agyei-Mensah, various Provosts, Deans and Heads of Departments at the University among others.

The awardees, drawn from the School of Languages and the School of Performing Arts, were part of the first cohort group of the University’s College of Humanities who were honoured on the first day.

This year’s event was held for two days with students in the College of Humanities being awarded on Thursday 4th May while those in the Sciences were honoured on Friday, 5th May, 2023.

The five award winners are as follows: Lancelot Allottey received the Lebanese Arts Prize in Music, Efezino Uweribeno received the Lebanese Arts Prize in Theatre Arts and Jessica Donkor received the Lebanese Arts Prize in Dance Studies.

From the School of Languages, Esther Livingstream received the Lebanese Literature Prize (Arabic option) while Abdul-Nasir Habib received the Lebanese Literature Prize (French option).

In 2021, the Lebanese Community Scholarship scheme mounted two prize categories namely, the “Lebanese Literature Prize” for language students and the “Lebanese Arts Prize” for arts students.

Ambassador Kheir has over the years expressed his firm belief in using the arts as a powerful tool to build bridges that unite people.

This initiative forms part of efforts by the Lebanese Ambassador and Community to encourage the study of Language and Arts at the University and at the same time help to bridge the cultural gap between Lebanon and Ghana.

In her address, the Vice Chancellor of the University, Professor Nana Aba Appiah Amfo congratulated all award winners on their stellar performance.“To our award winners, we say Ayekoo. Congratulations on your achievements. Your hard work, dedication, perseverance and commitment to academic excellence have yielded good results and you should be proud of yourselves” she said.

She urged continuing students to study hard in order to earn similar feats in the future. She said, “This honour done you is evidence of your stewardship during your stay at this university. I believe this will propel continuing students to stay focused on the attainment of their goals”.

She also called for more sponsorship from corporate Ghana and well-meaning Ghanaisn to award more students in other important fields.

“I encouraged other organizations and individuals to take up the sponsorship of new academic prizes in the University of Ghana because there are more fields to reward academic excellence than available resources can cater for” she added.

Over the last decade, several Ghanaian students have received assistance under the Lebanese Community Scholarship Programme which is its 10th Anniversary this year.

The ceremony also saw several other students from various departments receive awards for distinguishing themselves in their courses of study.