Universities Fund – Kenya, understudies GETFund
A five-member delegation from Universities Fund Kenya, has paid a three-day working visit to the Ghana Education Trust (GETFund) primarily to understudy the mandate and the operations of the Ghana’s Fund that provides supplementary support for the finance of education.
Universities Fund, Kenya, is the version of GETFund that is a creature of Parliament, section 53 of the University Act, 2012 with the mandate to raise funds to support Kenyan citizens in realizing higher education. The Kenya Universities Fund was operationalised in 2016.
The Administrator of GETFund, Dr. Richard Ampofo Boadu, received the visitors on behalf of the Board of Trustees and Management to its Secretariat, Accra, on Tuesday 6th December, 2022. In his welcoming remarks, Dr. Boadu narrated the antecedent of the Fund out of university students’ agitations on the introduction of cost sharing policy rolled out by the public universities in the mid-1990s.
According to Dr. Ampofo Boadu, the establishment of the Ghana Education Trust Fund Act, 2000, Act 581 was the government’s response to the issue of education financing in Ghana. ‘The Act was assented to in August 2000 by the then President, Mr. J.J. Rawlings, and came into operations in June 2001 under the leadership of President J.A. Kufuor’, the Administrator said. The GETFund Administrator further stated; The coming into force of GETFund for the past 21 years has had impactful effect on the financing of education and the improvement of access, retention and completion of students from kindergarten, through primary to secondary education ending with university education’.
He explained that Act 581 initially set out 2.5 percent of valued Added Tax (VAT) as the primary source of funding to the Fund. An amendment to the Act has established and independent GETFund Levy, of 2.5 percent on sales of goods and services for education financing purposes.
Dr. Boadu outlined the operational activities of GETFund that centred on seventy percent projects, across all levels of education, twenty five percent supplementary support to the Ministry of Education and the other twenty-one agencies under the Ministry, with five percent of its budget going into scholarship awards.
Dr. Richard Ampofo Boadu was thrilled with the presence of the friends from Kenya who run a similar government agency with an analogous mandate, all aimed at improving the human skill capacity and knowledge base of most citizens in the Sub-Saharan Africa.
My dear friends from Kenya, truly, we have similar challenges to confront with relative to education at its various levels. It’s therefore critical for us to interact in this manner as we learn and unlearn from each other’s experiences for mutually beneficial interests’
Mr. Geoffrey Monari, the Leader of the delegation and the Chief Executive Officer of the Universities Fund, Kenya, in his response revealed how he treasures the opportunity to meet the GETFund team to learn from the operations of the more experienced GETFund in this arena of raising funds to supplement education financing. Mr. Monari said, the major difference between the two agencies is the level of focus. ‘Whereas, Kenya’s Universities Fund concentrates on university students, GETFund caters for all levels of education’. ‘That is a big lesson we are picking up’, Mr. Monari revealed. He again, said, while the Universities Fund duels on subsidies for university students, the GETFund has its major operations on constructions of structures in the schools. ‘We have realized GETFund is mindful of the school environment as it ought to be conducive and safe to inure sound academic activities’, the CEO expressed.
A member of the delegation, Professor Walter Mwanda, a Medical Consultant and Teacher at the Nairobi University Medical School, and a Trustee of the Fund, in his appreciative remarks appealed to leaders in Africa to provide improved assistance in the funding of education in the Sub Saharan African, since the current rate of nine percent Gross Tertiary Enrollment Ratio (GTER) is nothing to report on. He admonished, since, the Asians and other Europeans are recording fifty percent and above GTERs, we ought to up our numbers in the number of citizens receiving tertiary education. ‘Natural Resources cannot develop Africa’. ‘It is only the skilled and the honest citizens that will develop this our continent for us’, Prof Mwanda counselled.
The delegation also visited the offices of Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) and Students Loans Trust Fund (SLTF) for first-hand information on their activities.
The other members of the delegation were;
1. Mrs. Dianah Mutisya – Member Board of Trustees, University Fund
2. Dr. Kennedy Nyaundi Esq. – Member Board of Trustees, Universities Fund
3. Mr. Hanson Kwamini – Deputy Director Resource Mobilization, Universities Fund
