Ghana and Japan sign scholarship agreement for government officials

By Edmund Smith-Asante, ACCRA

GHANA and Japan last Tuesday signed a grant agreement geared towards the training of young government officials in Japanese universities.

The grant for Human Resource Development Scholarship 2014, also known as the JDS programme, amounts to US$1.2 million and will provide five young and promising Ghanaian government officials scholarships to obtain master’s degrees in public health and economics.

According to the Japanese Ambassador to Ghana, Mr Naoto Nikai, who signed for his country, the two areas of study “were chosen, as the Ghanaian and the Japanese governments considered them strategically important areas in terms of strengthening the human resource for Ghana’s national development”.

“This year, we have already selected five capable young government officials from a group of distinguished candidates through examinations and interviews and they will commence their studies in Japan in September,” he said.

Mr Nikai said the JDS, which is being provided for the third consecutive year, was an addition to existing scholarship programmes, adding that more than 190 government officials went on long and short-term training programmes in Japan last year.

Complementing government’s efforts

The Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Ms Hanna Serwaa Tetteh, who signed the grant agreement on behalf of Ghana, said the aid would be disbursed in three tranches between the date of entry into force of the agreement and February 2016.

“The Japanese grant package will invariably complement the measures the government of Ghana is taking to develop the country’s human resource required for its economic development,” she said.

Other grants

Ms Tetteh said Ghana had already benefitted from three grants in April, namely, the grant aid for food security for under-privileged farmers, amounting to approximately US$3.2 million; the grant aid for the implementation of the project for fisheries promotion in Sekondi, totalling about US$17.7 million, and the grant aid for a poverty reduction strategy in the form of sector budget support for the health sector, totaling about US$1.9 million.

Writer’s email: Edmund.Asante@graphic.com.gh

FACTS

• Last year, Ghana received grant aid of US$25.4 million from the Japanese government for targeted sectors, including power distribution in the Brong Ahafo and the Northern regions, and human resource development.

• The Japanese Prime Minister, Mr Shinzo Abe, at the fifth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD V) last year, announced an “Africa Business Education Initiative (ABE Initiative) for the youth, which is a five-year plan to provide 1,000 youth in Africa with opportunities to study in Japanese universities and do internship in Japanese companies.

This was first published by the Daily Graphic on July 24, 2014