The General Manager of the Venture Capital Trust Fund (VCTF), Ms Hamdiya Ismaila, has called for a strong partnership between academia and industry to drive Ghana’s economic growth.

According to her, such collaboration would enable universities get funding from industry, whereas industry gets the needed research from universities.

Ms. Ismaila said this at the launch of the University of Cape Coast at 60 Innovation Report, UCC 2023-2027 Research Agenda, and Special Awards Ceremony. The UCC at 60 Innovation Report chronologically chronicles discoveries by Faculty in the past sixty years of the University’s existence with the UCC 2023-2027 Research Agenda, the third by the University, capturing the University’s research outline for the next five years. 

It was on the theme: "Academia Industry Innovation Matchmaking: Practical steps for 21st Century Universities.”

Ms. Ismaila, who was the guest speaker at the ceremony, noted that academia should not work in isolation; instead industry should be involved in any research agenda.

“If industry is involved in setting the agenda, industry will pay for the cost because funding has been a very key issue around research in academia," she said, adding: “there are a lot of researches here (UCC) but industry is not aware."

The General Manager pointed out that “building bridges between university researchers and businesses is critical for knowledge transfer. This is no longer an option. It's a must".

Ms Hamdiya maintained that industry had had issues with academia because "certain research does not pass for promotion." She was of the view that academia were not making their research works available to the public because  researchers feared that industry would take advantage of their research works to exploit them of their intellectual property.

She therefore entreated academia to patent their research works to generate revenue for their intellectual property right.

"As a measure of financial success, patent, licensing, royalties, that is where we are going and that is where the collaboration discussion should focus" she added.

Source:  Documentation and Information Section-UCC