By Lawrence Odoom
Hon. Julius Debrah, Chief of Staff to the President, served as Special Guest of Honour at GIMPA’s 65th anniversary celebration and presided over the commissioning of the new offices of the Center for West African Studies, CWAS, for Digital Public Governance, situated on the university’s Greenhill campus.
The state-of-the-art centre, birthed from a strategic academic alliance between the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration and the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, UESTC, is poised to serve as a crucible for the training of public administrators in contemporary communication technologies. Its mandate is unequivocal thus to equip the architects of governance with digital competencies that fortify transparency, accountability, and service delivery in the country.
The unveiling was preceded by the formal execution of a Memorandum of Understanding between Prof. Samuel Kwaku Bonsu, Rector of GIMPA, and Prof. Zhao Shurong, Director of CWAS at UESTC. The accord crystallizes a transcontinental partnership designed to deepen intellectual exchange, research collaboration, and capacity development in digital governance.
Speaking at the ceremony, Mr. Debrah lauded the initiative as a visionary convergence of scholarship and statecraft. He emphasized that the architecture of effective governance in the 21st century must be undergirded by technological literacy, and that institutions such as GIMPA must lead the charge in recalibrating public administration for the digital epoch.
Prof. Bonsu described the CWAS centre as a watershed in GIMPA’s evolution, asserting that the collaboration with UESTC would accelerate Ghana’s transition toward data-driven, citizen-centric governance. Prof. Zhao Shurong, for his part, underscored China’s commitment to supporting Africa’s digital transformation through knowledge transfer and institutional synergy.
GIMPA’s launch of the CWAS Digital Public Governance hub, amid commemorations of six and a half decades of moulding leadership, affirms its resolve to remain at the vanguard of innovation in public service education. The centre now stands as both symbol and instrument of Ghana’s ambition to harness technology as a catalyst for institutional renewal and national progress.