After a decade of building Regentropfen University College in the Upper East Region, its founder and President, Rev. Fr. Dr Moses Asaah Awinongya, says the experience has convinced him that Ghana needs more universities designed to respond directly to the country’s development challenges.
So convinced is he of the potential of tertiary institutions to transform communities that, given the resources, he says he would establish many more.
“If I had the financial resources and 10 people like Moses, one of my employees, I would put up 10 universities,” he said.
Behind the remark is a broader argument about the role universities can play beyond awarding degrees.
For Rev. Fr. Awinongya, tertiary institutions should create opportunities for young people, produce research that responds to local problems, develop businesses and help communities build the expertise needed to drive their own development.
That thinking, he said, was central to the establishment of Regentropfen University College 10 years ago.
The institution was founded partly on the belief that young people in the Upper East Region needed greater access to higher education and professional training without necessarily having to leave the region.
A decade later, Rev. Fr. Awinongya said seeing the transformation in students who pass through the institution has reinforced that conviction.
Many, he said, arrive with limited opportunities but leave with qualifications, new ambitions and a stronger sense of what they can achieve.
“For us, if you’re not making money, what is keeping us on? It is the joy in the faces of the young people,” he said.
Bringing talent back home
His ambition, however, extends beyond increasing enrolment or expanding the physical size of Regentropfen University College.
Rev. Fr. Awinongya wants the institution to develop into a centre for teaching, research and professional development that can help attract and retain expertise in the Upper East Region.
For years, many professionals from the region have travelled elsewhere in Ghana and abroad to study, work and build careers. He believes acquiring experience elsewhere is important, but says some of that expertise must eventually find its way home.
“It is good that we go out and we get experience, but we also have to come back home to build,” he said.
His argument is that the region cannot depend indefinitely on expertise from elsewhere to identify and solve its problems. It must also create the institutions and opportunities capable of attracting its professionals home and giving them a platform to contribute.
He cited the example of a young professional from Namoo who offered to teach at Regentropfen without receiving payment. He also spoke about a relative in the United States who is a professor, pointing to the pool of expertise that could potentially contribute to higher education in the region.
For Rev. Fr. Awinongya, attracting such people is part of a larger ambition to make the Upper East Region a destination for education, research and investment.
Researching problems from where they happen
That ambition also involves changing how research about northern Ghana is undertaken.
Rev. Fr. Awinongya believes organisations and companies conducting research in the Upper East Region should increasingly look to universities based in the region as potential research partners.
Local institutions, he argues, are close to the communities and development challenges being studied and can therefore contribute knowledge, researchers and an understanding of the local context.
But he does not believe Regentropfen can achieve that ambition by working alone.
He wants stronger collaboration among tertiary institutions in the Upper East Region, including Bolgatanga Technical University and the University of Technology and Applied Sciences.
Rather than viewing the institutions solely as competitors for students and resources, he believes they can identify areas where their strengths complement one another.
“If we now see what are the common things that we can do in terms of research collaborations, in terms of investment and stuff like that, so that we can grow together,” he said.
Such partnerships, he said, could extend to research, investment and joint academic programmes, including joint degrees that give students access to expertise across institutions.
Beyond the lecture hall
For Rev. Fr. Awinongya, the contribution of a university should also be visible outside its lecture halls.
As part of activities marking Regentropfen University College’s 10th anniversary, the institution is undertaking a project at Bongo Hospital, which he describes as a practical contribution to the community in which the university operates.
The institution is also organising a skills and trade fair intended to connect students with business executives.
Students will have opportunities to pitch business ideas, with selected participants expected to receive seed funding and guidance to develop their businesses.
These initiatives, he said, reflect his belief that universities should not exist as isolated academic institutions.
Their work should contribute to the economic and social development of the communities around them.
That means producing graduates, but it also means supporting entrepreneurship, generating research, building professional networks and helping find solutions to local problems.
Growing, but not at any cost
After its first decade, Regentropfen University College also has ambitions of becoming an independent university with stronger faculties and more experienced academics.
But Rev. Fr. Awinongya said expansion must be approached carefully.
Growing student numbers or introducing programmes without the corresponding infrastructure, lecturers and academic capacity could compromise the quality of education, he said.
The institution is therefore seeking to balance its ambition for growth with the resources required to sustain it.
For its founder, however, the long-term objective remains much larger than Regentropfen itself.
He believes Ghana can deliberately establish and strengthen universities around identified gaps in education, skills, research and economic development.
The impact, he argues, would extend beyond the graduates who receive certificates.
Universities can attract researchers and professionals, create demand for businesses and services, support entrepreneurship, generate research and connect communities to investment opportunities.
That is why, 10 years after establishing Regentropfen University College, Rev. Fr. Awinongya says he would do it again.
And if the resources were available, he would not stop at one, he would build about 10.
A1 Radio | 101.1 MHz | Moses Apiah | Bolgatanga
