The Ghana Exports and Promotions Authority (GEPA) Export School has held its maiden congregation in Accra graduating 19 students with level four Diploma in International Trade.
The one-year programme held yesterday is an online course piloted in partnership with the International Trade Centre (ITC) and the Institute of Export and International Trade(IOE).
It is intended to equip export professionals as well as players in other sectors with proper export managerial, technical skills and trade capacity that enabled global competitiveness.
Aside the pioneering class, a second batch of 28 students are currently enrolled onto the second phase of the course.
Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, Herbert Krapa who delivered the keynote address said government programmes such as the National Industrial Revitalisation Programme, One-District One Factory, interventions in Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME’s) and the Export Development Programme presented opportunities to the graduates in a sector that was eager to build an ecosystem of experts.
He added that there was various multilateral and regional opportunities aided by the presence of the African Continental free Trade Area (AfCFTA) in the country and implored the students to explore them.
“Persons such as you who are graduating from the export school should be mindful of industrial strategies. You are graduating at a time when we are engaging the productive sectors of our economy and so it is for you to recognise the extra responsibility you carry because you are a pioneering class that is going to be a bedrock for a long time to come” he stated.
For the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of GEPA, Dr Afua Asabea Asare, she said the School was instituted as one of government’s three strategic pillars under its National Export Development Strategy which GEPA was mandated as the lead agency to implement.
As part of the third strategic pillar which was to build and expand the required human capital for industrial export development and marketing, she said the school was established to provide capacity building initiatives to exporters.
She said it was envisioned that graduates from the school will be capable of transforming Ghana’s natural resources and raw commodities into manufactured economic wealth and that graduates of the Export School would be capable of transforming Ghana’s natural resources and raw commodities into manufactured economic wealth
The Head of Learning , Programme at the ITC, Shau Lake, said the country needed the right human capital to be able to take advantage of the AfCFTA
Valedictorian, Kwaku Dwomo Owusu, who also emerged as the overall best student said they were determined to apply their studies in the practical world to make Ghana competitive in the global trade arena.
BY BENEDICTA GYIMAAH FOLLEY
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