The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Professor Nana Aba Appiah Amfo, has stressed the urgent need for sustained, locally controlled funding to support research development in Ghana.
Delivering her inaugural lecture at the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences on Thursday, April 23, 2026, Prof. Amfo highlighted persistent challenges facing research financing in public universities, noting that delays and inadequacies associated with the Book and Research Allowance (BRA) continue to undermine research productivity.
According to her, research funding across much of Sub-Saharan Africa remains heavily dependent on external sources, particularly from the Global North—a situation that affects the independence of African scholarship.
“Across much of Sub-Saharan Africa, perhaps with the partial exception of South Africa, research funding remains overwhelmingly dependent on external sources, particularly from the Global North. This dependence has consequences. Even where collaborations are well-intentioned, funding structures often come with predefined research priorities, asymmetries in agenda-setting, and imbalances in ownership and recognition,” she stated.
She explained that this structure often leaves African scholars actively participating in research projects while remaining peripheral in determining research directions and outcomes.
Prof. Amfo further noted that although faculty members in Ghana’s public universities are entitled, in principle, to an annual research allowance equivalent to about US$1,500, the allowance has, alongside a reinterpretation of its purpose, increasingly functioned more as income supplementation than as a meaningful investment in research.
“In a moment of characteristic Ghanaian ingenuity, BRA is sometimes reinterpreted not as Book and Research Allowance, but as Building and Roofing Allowance. This may sound humorous, but the underlying reality is serious,” she remarked.
She observed that bureaucratic delays in accessing the allowance frequently erode research momentum, limiting its intended impact on scholarly productivity.
“The process of accessing it is often accompanied by considerable agitation, sometimes even threats of strikes, and occasionally actual strikes. While all this is unfolding publicly, friends and family wait in eager anticipation to partake in what is presumed to be a small windfall. By the time the allowance is eventually disbursed, the research momentum it was intended to support has often dissipated—if, indeed, it was ever sufficient to meaningfully sustain research in the first place,” she said.
Despite these challenges, the Vice-Chancellor expressed cautious optimism about reforms within Ghana’s research funding landscape, particularly the operationalisation of the Ghana National Research Fund Act, 2020 (Act 1056).
“It is within this context that the passage of the Ghana National Research Fund Act, 2020 (Act 1056), was welcome news. Equally encouraging has been the recent effort to operationalise the Act through the establishment of its board and secretariat, with the promise of a seed grant. We wait with cautious optimism to see how its full implementation will reshape the research landscape in Ghana, particularly in terms of providing sustained, predictable, and locally controlled funding for research,” she added.
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Story by Oliver Arthur Acorlor | univers.ug.edu.gh
Edited by Gabriel Tecco Mensah
