UMaT and the Stanbic Bank Ghana Ltd have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to collaborate in activities of the Stanbic Aspire Business Academy. The Academy aims to build capacity of students of Ghanaian tertiary institutions to have a better understanding of who they are as individuals and as business owners, refine their business ideas and gain clarity to tackle the next steps and establish the right structures and processes for their business.
The VC, Professor Richard Amankwah, stated the University’s position on student entrepreneurship as a core objective in alignment with contemporary university training. He indicated that UMaT was not just about training engineering students to earn degrees, but additionally acquire skills and knowledge that would enable them create jobs for themselves and employ others upon graduation. This, he added, was the motivation for the establishment of the UMaT Business Incubation Hub (U-Hub).
He observed that a strategic partnership between UMaT and Stanbic Bank Ghana Ltd in respect of student entrepreneurship was one of the surest ways to actualizing the University’s dream of training students to become entrepreneurs.
On the part of Stanbic Bank Ghana Ltd, the Manager, Western Commercial Suite, Joseph Tunde Boateng, stated that the bank had decided to partner traditional and technical Universities to leverage the young talented minds of students, enabling them to develop their ideas into businesses. The establishment of the Stanbic Business Incubator Initiative is thus the special purpose vehicle of the Bank for transforming student ideas into businesses through support for their ideas and acquisition of entrepreneurial skills. The aim of Stanbic is to help students eventually own businesses, create jobs, create wealth and ultimately contribute to growing the Ghanaian economy. The MoU between the Bank and UMaT is to provide a springboard for contributing to bring this dream into reality.