KOICA Alumni Association inaugurates 5-member executive board
A new five-member all female executive board of the KOICA Alumini Association of Ghana (KAAG) were sworn into office in Accra yesterday.
The executives, led by Mrs Lovia Afoakwa, a Planning Analyst, have the aim to promote Korea-Ghana bilateral ties to spur national development, over the next three years.
KAAG is made up of individuals, mostly public and civil servants, who had studied on scholarships and other training programmes in Korea through the facilitation of the Korean International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), Ghana.
The non-profit organisation has the objective to give back to society and strengthen the peace and friendship between the Republic of Korea and Ghana through partnership, developmental projects and knowledge sharing.
At its third General Assembly in Accra, the Korean Ambassador to Ghana, Jung-Taek Lim, said his government was guided by the principles of cooperation and collaboration to achieve developmental goals.
He said, it was in view of this, that Korea had maintained bilateral ties with Ghana over the years particularly in the area of capacity building to boost the country’s human resource across various sectors.
“Our agencies such as the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), the Korea Foundation for International Healthcare (KOFIH), the Korea Exim Bank, Korean Programme on InternationalAgriculture (KOPIA), and Korea Trade-Investment Agency (KOTRA), are all working in Ghana to support the country’s development,” he said.
Expressing his resolve to further deepen the ties, the Ambassador reminded the alumni of the role they ought to play in supporting Ghana’s transformational agenda by utilizing the knowledge acquired from Korea to change the status quo.
“You need to be acting as agents of change at all times to improve the various sectors of the economy you represent,” he advised.
The Country Director for KOICA Ghana, Mr Moo-Heong Kong explained that KOICA’s Capacity Improvement and Advancement for Tomorrow (CIAT) program assists and guides partner countries to carve out their interventions, initiatives, and programmes that were context and content specific to their prevailing issues to come out with the best solutions.
He disclosed that this year, the government of the Republic of Korea through the CIAT programme, awarded master’s degree scholarships to 40 (Forty) Ghanaian government officials to study various programmes in Korea for 2022 to 2023 academic year.
He expressed hope that the General Assembly would allow members to further deliberate on the current state and progress of the Alumni Association.
“Iurge members to continue to network and connect professionally to strategise on how the Association can grow and reach out to other inactive members to join while achieving its objectives for the coming year,” he stated.
For her part, Mrs Afoakwa, thanked her colleagues for the confidence reposed in her and promised to work together with her team to raise the KAAG image to a higher pedestal.
BY ABIGAIL ANNOH
