Patience Gbeze
Accra, June 24, GNA –Ms Joselyn Fosua Adjei, a PhD candidate at the Centre for Migration Studies (CMS), University of Ghana, has emphasised the need for humanities to engage with sciences by exploring new ideas and involving people to understand their perspectives.
She said those perspectives could be used to “define innovations in our own space in Ghana through collaboration and sharing”.
Ms Adjei was speaking at the launch of this year’s College -Level celebration of the Day of the Scientific Renaissance of Africa (DSRA) and Exhibition of Scholarly works.
It was organized by the College of Humanities of the University on the theme “Ghana’s Climate Innovation Landscape: Unlocking the potential with Science and Sustainability”.
Ms Adjei said humanities had a key role to play in supporting applied sciences to address climate change issues in Ghana.
“Climate change is stirring us in the faces? and has become a key developmental challenges of our lives.
“We are all privy to the recent changes in the weather… we now have rainfall that cannot be controlled, also times that there should be rain yet, we don’t see the rain, thereby causing a lot of environmental degradation, leading to climate change.”
She said societal integrity remained untapped area that the humanities should harness to address climate change challenges.
“University of Ghana is very well placed to bring this to life- the cultural interface of these interventions and how local people accepted it”.
She called for the need to embrace lifelong learning and also to consciously market and deploy research works to inform policy across all sectors.
“Most research works end up on the shelves,” she said, and urged the College to endearvour to exhibit some of their works outside the University, even at the global level to showcase what the college is doing.
“The works are beautiful and it should not be limited here…let’s talk about climate innovation backed by sustainable science where human behavior is an active part,” she stressed.
Professor Joseph Awetori Yaro, the Provost of the College of Humanities, said the main objective of the celebration was to remind African governments and people about the important contributions of science and technology to Africa’s development.
He said the day was celebrated in remembrance of the continent’s great contributions to the rise and development of modern science and technology.
“So today’s event is to showcase the contributions of the Units within our College to the development to science and technology in Africa by way of the research that we have contributed, the inventions that we have come out with, and the impact that we have had on society.”
He said the theme focused on key research agenda that was confronting the nation and the entire world.
“The innovative and timely intervention of this celebration is important as Ghana seeks to promote climate change understanding and responses in Humanities, Social Science, Language, Performance, and Culture.
“So basically, we want to promote scientific research on climate change”, he noted, adding that “there is a danger that Africa might focus on only applied sciences to the neglect of humanities and social science, language and others, which we know are the main vessels for acceptance and implementation of hard core science”.
Prof. Yaro said: “Two years ago, we have shown the importance of the humanities as a science, establishing that we are a science, and therefore we are not going through that again.
“We are now interested in showing you how scientific our methodologies and findings are, and also how we can contribute in making sure that there are acceptance of technologies that the hard core sciences have produced.”
He noted the Humanities and Social Sciences provided both theoretical and conceptual lenses to the understanding of the social, geographical, political, technological and cultural contents surrounding the causes or impact of and responses to climate change.
He expressed the hope that the keynote address would contribute to the intensification of lessons drawing, knowledge sharing and purposive interactions among researchers, policy makers, students and communities on “how we could adopt a more holistic approach in our efforts to promote Ghana’s climate innovation landscape as we harness the benefits of humanities and others”.
The Provost congratulated the organising committee, led by Professor Mary B. Setrana, the Director of Centre for Migration Studies, for putting up comprehensive activities to mark the day.
Professor Gordon A. Awandara, Pro-Vice Chancellor in charge of Academic and Students’ Affair, said: “climate change is one of the challenges of our life time and it behoves all of us to do our parts to not only mitigate the effects but to innovate and develop solutions that both address the challenge and promote economic growth and also allow us to be more resilient to the impact of climate change.”
He said for a problem as complex as climate change there was a need for inter disciplinary research, cross disciplinary collaboration to provide integrated solutions.
He emphasised the University’s commitment to play its role in generating new knowledge and developing innovations that would have Ghana and the continent to face out the challenges of climate change.
Prof. Awandara announced that the University had entered into a partnership with the Mastercard Foundation, which would give significant funding to build capacity and to do research in climate change.
“Over the next eight years, the Mastercard Foundation has committed 24 million dollars to support the university to build capacity and to do research in innovation and climate,” he said.
He said the initiative had four major components to empower the youth and give them the opportunities for Advance Degrees, Masters, PhDs, among others in climate related areas across every disciplinary.
He said the initiative would consider young women, People With Disabilities, Displaced People and other marginalized groups because they believed that effects of these challenges affect some of these groups.
GNA
Christian Akorlie