Dr Robert Awuah Baffour, Vice President of Ghana Technology University (GTUC), has reaffirmed the University’s commitment to deliver on its mandate of mounting technology-oriented programmes relevant to the needs of businesses and industry.

He said the future of Ghana and the African continent at large depends on the willingness of leaders to harness the new information communication technologies to advance growth and improve quality of lives of the citizenry.

Dr Baffour made this known in Accra at the weekend during the matriculation ceremony marking the official induction of 722 students to pursue various certificate, diploma and degree programmes for the September intake of the 2014/2015 academic year.

He said: “A nation unable to join this new economic order, unable to harness the power of Information Communication Technology (ICT) is effectively locked out of the new global economy and forced to remain a marginal player on the world economic stage.”

He noted that major economies like Singapore, China and India have been transformed significantly and become richer in the last 20 years largely due to well-planned formal and informal education that meet nation specific needs.

“On the contrary, Sub-Saharan Africa has not flourished and become poorer largely due to lack of education,” the Vice President added.

He urged the matriculants to take the advantage of access to tertiary education to build their capacities towards changing the face of poverty and despair to income and hope.

“The expectation is that you use what you learn here (GTUC) to make a difference in the lives of the people of this country and beyond, to help the people of this country become prosperous and healthy.”

The University Public Relations Affairs says the school which has nearly 6000 local and international students runs certificate, diploma, undergraduate, masters and doctoral programmes that are unique, contemporary and structured to meet the needs of modern society.

The hallmark of the school is to prepare graduates for the ICT profession by offering telecom engineering, information technology, computer engineering, computer forensics, software engineering, computer science, oil and gas management, aviation management among others at the undergraduate, graduate and doctoral levels, it added.