Accra, April 25, GNA - Vice President Alhaji Aliu Mahama on Wednesday called on the University of Ghana Business School (UGBS) to develop demand-driven academic programmes to equip the students with the requisite skills so as to deliver satisfactory services to their clients and the nation at large.

He noted that the nation needed competent managers to enhance development, saying, "good managers make organizations successful and successful organizations advance the cause of society by ensuring national development and improved living standards". The Vice President was inaugurating the UGBS as part of its annual management week celebration after the University Council accepted the change in name in 2004 from the School of Administration to Business School.

The occasion which was climaxed with the unveiling of a commemorative monument was under the theme: "UGBS: Excellence and Leadership In Management Education In Ghana."

The school was established as the Department of Commerce in 1952 in the then College of Technology, now Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and relocated to Accra in 1962 under the name, School of Administration.

It was to serve as a comprehensive institution which would provide appropriate training programmes for administrative and accounting personnel in the rapidly expanding economy.

The name School of Administration was more appropriate in the 1960s when most of the programmes were aimed at training personnel for the public sector.

The change in name became necessary to strategise and re-orient itself to meet the development goals and aspirations of the country and provide world class management education and research to support national development.

Vice President Mahama said the government had not overlooked the strong correlation between the human resource development and total national development and this was prioritized in President John Agyekum Kufuor's State of the Nation Address to Parliament in 2005. He said under this objective, the government under the Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS II) through the Ministry of Public Sector Reforms and its development partners was building capacity to provide knowledgeable, well trained and disciplined labour force to drive and sustain private led growth.

The Vice President said the repositioning and inauguration of the UGBS coincided perfectly with the launch of the new education reform which from September 1, this year, was expected to advance the nation's literacy and numeracy rate by nearly 100 per cent by 2015.

He said what was required now was the strategic readiness of tertiary institutions to absorb the output of the new four year Senior High School which was expected to prepare candidates for entry into the tertiary institutions or the job market.

Alhaji Aliu Mahama commended the UGBS for the good work done so far but urged it to continue to provide leadership through research and innovation, maintain world class standards in management training and education.

He appealed to the alumni and other stakeholders of the University of Ghana Business School to support the School to establish academic chairs and funds to expand research projects, stock the libraries and award scholarships which would contribute significantly to achieve the School's vision and national development.

Professor Clifford Nii Boi Tagoe, Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana, said the School had, since its incorporation into the University structure responded to the dynamics of change in its environment and met the needs of society in terms of knowledge and qualification of the nation's manpower base.

He said in the era of proliferation of private universities and institutions of higher learning, the School had accepted affiliations from these institutions and continued to mentor them to provide high standard of training and education to their students. However, the School's achievements had been made under serious resource constraints in terms of equipment, space, dwindling faculty-student ratio and called on individuals, institutions and organizations to support it so as to facilitate its current activities. "By so doing, we can reaffirm our partnership and interdependence. We train and supply to you the much needed human resources. You need our students and we need you to extend a hand of support through practitioner involvement in our programmes, through logistics, finances and sheer goodwill."

Mr Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu, Minister of Finance and Economic Planning and an alumni of the School, said discipline and dedication to work must guide both the staff and students to ensure professional quality. He said inflation was the worst enemy to national development and urged the students to learn to establish their own businesses to augment that of the government as well as bridge the unemployment gap.