Fifty Eight ( 58) young Africans who successfully participated in the 10 -months regular MSc in Mathematical Sciences programme have graduated from the African Institute of Mathematical Sciences, AIMS Ghana.
The graduates comprise forty ( 40) males and eighteen ( 18) females from sixteen African countries, including 35 non – Ghanaians and 23 Ghanaians.
All graduates obtained their master’s programme on scholarship merit.
Their degrees were awarded in affiliation with three partner universities in Ghana Namely ; Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology- KNUST; University of Ghana and University of Cape Coast- UCC.
During their studies, the students also developed essential entrepreneurship and personal development skills through teamwork and project presentations.
The 12th graduation ceremony witnessed a well packed auditorium at the University of Ghana, attended by families of the graduates, foreign dignitaries including representatives of the German Ambassador to Ghana, H.E. Amb. Danile Krull, and the representative of the Sudan Ambassador to Ghana as well as several professors from Ghana.
Six ( 6) graduates who obtained academic distinction were awarded, with Livingstone Agakpe Nyamadi winning the Valedictorian award and Annah Naturinda receiving the “ Emmy Noether” Best graduating female student award.
The UNESCO category 2 Centre of Excellence has over the past two decades graduated 531 students from 26 African countries with a significant 33% being females.
In his welcome remarks, Centre President at AIMS Ghana, Dr. Prince Koree Osei said the next decade is crucial for Africans youth.
“ Within the next decade, Africa is going to have the largest workforce surpassing China and India. In the 2040s, Africa will account for two out of every five children that are born on this planet. And by the time we are in 2050, more than a third, about 35% of the young people between the ages of 15 and 24 in the world will be African.
So the potential of Africa is in the young people. So what are we doing for these young people who are beaming with talent and energy on this continent?. What are we doing to prepare them to support the world”?.
“ In March this year, the AIMS Global Network celebrated 20 years in South Africa. The event also marked 12 years of the German Researcher Program at AIMS and during the celebration, we launched a new slogan and this slogan was a competition among AIMS students across the network. So we were looking at the new direction of AIMS and the future of AIMS. And after the competition, the students who won the competition proposed an outstanding slogan, and this is amazing because it came from the students. And I quote, in Africa’s youth, the future of science.
We believe that the future of science is in the youth of Africa, and moving away from our next Einstein Africa initiative, we are refocusing on preparing young Africans to play a leading role in shaping the future of science for the world.
Over the past decade, AIMS –Ghana has become a magnet for attracting young African students, and developing them to make impact in education, pure mathematics, computer science. Computational finance, epidemiology and so on”.
On her part, Sivine Jansen, the representative of the German Ambassador to Ghana, H.E Daniel Krull said the German government will deepen its collaboration with AIMS.
“It is in this regard that we are pleased that the collaboration has allowed for the establishment of two German research chairs to strengthen education and research capabilities, and deepen cooperation between Ghanaian and German scientists.
In full disclosure, AIMS is not the only project where we do German -Ghanaian science collaboration. We are actually supporting, in that regard to push also Ghanaian science, African and Ghanaian scientific excellence, we are supporting a number of other research institutes”.
The Valedictorian, Livingstone Agakpe Nyamadi was full of praises for the free scholarships the graduates obtained to participate in the AIMS Programme.
“AIMS Ghana has been more than just a place of learning. It has been a place in which our minds and spirits have been forged, preparing us to embrace the challenges of the world beyond these walls”.
Next year, AIMS is expected to recruit at least 60 students for the regular master’s programme, and 35 of these students will be part of a special cooperative education programme that will have a six -month extension in industry as part of the regular programme.
The centre is also expecting to recruit 100 students for the MSc mathematical sciences for teachers programme. An expansion of the Girls in Mathematics Sciences Programme (GMSP) is a new model that expects to reach about 1 ,000 young girls per year.
AIMS is also expected to start new programmes that are targeted at professionals and also the possibility of starting undergraduate programmes in artificial intelligence, data science, and computational finance.
