Mr. J.H. Mensah, Senior Minister said on Saturday that Ghana was poor because the nation's productivity of work was low.

Productivity is low because the technologies that were applied to the processes of working and living were generally backward, Mr Mensah said at the 35th congregation of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi during which 2,341 graduants made up of 1,800 men and 531 women received their certificates. Out of the number, 115 obtained first class honours.

He noted that this situation was especially so in farming, which was by far the largest single occupation in the country, adding, "there is a long technological road to travel before we attain acceptable levels of agricultural productivity". The senior minister said until the country raised her productivity and modernised her technology, it could not escape the unnecessary trap of mass poverty.

Mr Mensah therefore, charged the university to utilise its vast reservoir of knowledge to think out novel and more efficient ways to solve the problems of science, technology and engineering confronting the nation, adding, "I refer to poverty, disease, ignorance, hunger, low productivity, social marginalisation and sheer deprivation".

He said, in recent years, certain ideologies in the field of national development had tried to persuade the country that virtually the only priority in the expenditure of public money for education was to attain universal basic education.

"We members of the present NPP government have always questioned and doubted that prescription. The myriad problems of Ghana's society and economy have to be solved at many different levels, each of them requiring from its managers a different content and level of education".

He pointed out that entrepreneurship, sound industrial management, good governance, professional social services, physical nation-building could not be supplied out of universal basic education.

The Senior Minister told the university that in order that the nation could benefit fully from the fruits of the research of members of the faculty, it was important for the lecturers to re-examine their methods of teaching to see how effective they were in maintaining the academic succession of the university.

"By sharing your experience and original thinking, and thereby stimulating the curiosity and enthusiasm of your students you could assure a continuing supply of recruits to the academic life," he said.