The University of Cape Coast (UCC) has held its 7th Research Awards and Grants Ceremony as part of the university’s goal to support quality research and encourage research excellence and innovation among faculty.

The University implemented this annual research support grants and awards scheme through the Directorate of Research, Innovation, and Consultancy (DRIC) to present the diversity of the University’s research endeavours and how they impact national socio-economic transformation.

The Awards received at this year’s edition included one Best Evolved Researcher Award, one Best Evolving Researcher Award, and five Best College-Level Researcher Awards.

The Research Support Grants also comprised two awards for Policy and Practice-Oriented Research Support Grant-University-Wide, two awards for Non-Teaching Senior Members, 9 for Individual Researchers, 17 awards for Group-Led Research, four for Inter-Departmental Research, and five for Special Funded Research.

In all, there were 7 Best Researcher Awards and 39 Research Support Grants.

While extending his congratulations to the awardees and grantees, the Vice Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast, Professor Johnson Nyarko Boampong stressed why currently it has become necessary for African Universities to engage in critical research and innovation.

He said, “the emerging challenges in the past several decades and those of the 21st century have brought to the fore the need for African universities to engage in critical research and innovation which will translate into tangible unusable outputs to improve the quality of life and society on a sustainable basis.”

As such, he said African universities and researchers are best placed to lead the identification of their own developmental needs and produce social and technological innovations through the conduct of relevant and impactful research which will provide solutions to local, national, and regional programs and advance the cost of humanity.

To that end, he said the University of Cape Coast looks forward to expanding the frontiers of this endeavor in the coming decades as the institution has been championing this agenda through research, innovation, and quality transformative education over the sixty years.

On his part, the Director of DRIC, Professor David Teye Doku believes the University of Cape Coast must do its best to sustain the Research Awards and Grants Ceremony because of the impact it is making in the University.

“The University of Cape Coast has embraced this mandate by crafting a research agenda which resonates with the national agenda, agenda 2057, regional Agenda, Au agenda 2063 and global developmental agenda, the UN Sustainable Development Goals. UCC suited the best research award and research grant seven years ago,” he said.

According to him, the research and grants research award and research grants are likely to have contributed to UCC’s sterling performances in both the the2022 and 2023 Times Higher Education World University Rankings as the first in Ghana, in West Africa, and as one of the topmost ranked universities globally, in terms of research influence.

This he notes made the university at par with universities like Cambridge, Oxford, and Harvard.

The 7th Research Awards and Grants Ceremony was held on the theme “Research and Innovation for Sustainable Development in a charging World: The Role of African Universities”.