Ghana is to host the eighth Africa Centres of Excellence (ACE) Project Steering Committee (PSC) meeting and the fifth workshop from May 16 to 19 with about 200 participants expected from all the 22 ACE countries.
The Africa higher education Centre of Excellence project is a World Bank sponsored initiative aimed at promoting regional specialisation in disciplinary fields such as Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, Health, and Agriculture.
It seeks to address regional development challenges as well as facilitate the delivery of high quality training and applied research and meet the skills demand of the regional labour market.
A statement signed by Professor Jonathan Mba, ACE Co-ordinator, and copied to the Ghana News Agency on Wednesday, said discussions would centre on progress made in project implementation since the disbursement of funds, challenges encountered, revenue generation efforts, sharing of experiences and the next steps.
The World Bank Task Team Leaders from all the participating countries are also expected in addition to subject area experts of Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, Health and Agriculture.
The Centres of Excellence in Ghana are hosted by the University of Ghana (West African Centre for Crop Improvement) and the West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens.
The third Centre is hosted by the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (Centre for Water and Environmental Sanitation).
Phase I of the ACE Project focuses on countries in West and Central Africa, while Phase II focuses on countries in eastern and southern Africa.
The ACE Project has two main components. Component One seeks to strengthen the capacity of 22 competitively selected institutions as centres of excellence to deliver regional quality training and applied research in partnership with regional and international academic institutions and industry related organisations.
Component Two seeks to support regional capacity building activities, project implementation, monitoring and evaluation, and develop regional policies. It also seeks to boost regional collaboration and strengthen higher educational institutions.
The statement said support would be provided to The Gambia so that its institutions could purchase education services from the centres of excellence established under Component One.
There are 22 ACEs in nine countries in West and Central Africa namely; Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire (three ACEs each), Nigeria (10 ACEs) Senegal (two ACEs), Togo, Benin Republic, Burkina Faso, and Cameroun (one ACE each) and The Gambia that is buying services from the 22 ACEs.
The project, which began in 2013, has held seven Project Steering Committee meetings and four ACE project workshops.
The first workshop was held in Abuja, Nigeria in May 2014 where the project was officially launched.
The second workshop took place in Yaounde, Cameroun in November 2014, the third in Banjul, The Gambia in May 2015, and the fourth in Cotonou, Benin Republic in November 2015.
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