Former Rector of Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), Prof. Franklyn Manu, has charged African governments to take ownership of the Management Development Institute (MDI) for Healthcare Organisations in Western, Eastern and Southern Africa programmes which is currently being funded by private organisations.
According to him, it was high time Africans took full charge of their destiny.
He said it was unfortunate the West African segment of the MDI programme, which is hosted by GIMPA in Ghana, has been running for ten continuous years and still being funded by donors.
Professor Manu made the call at the closing ceremony of the week-long intensive training of health professionals from seven English-speaking countries in West Africa and Uganda at the GIMPA Executive Centre in Accra over the week-end.
He maintained that quality healthcare of Africans should be a prime responsibility of African governments.
He asked why African leaders always wait for donors to take up their responsibilities.
“I sometimes feel sad when I see government officials and the executives buying one hundred thousand dollar Toyota land cruisers running on bad roads, full of potholes while that money can train about 200 health professionals whose service will impact more positively on the masses than the land cruisers,” he lamented.
Prof Manu, however, appealed to the organisers of the programme to add advocacy skill training to the current course content which includes Human Resources Management (Organisational Planning, Leadership and Change Management), Operations Management, Health Information Systems, Leadership, Programme Monitoring & Evaluation, Health Economics and Insurance, Social Marketing and Ethics and Governance.
The former rector commended GIMPA, and all other supporting institutions such as the Anderson School of Management, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF) which are seen to be successful in the running of the MDI programme for the past 10 years.
Story: Franklin Asare-Donkoh
