By Wallace Mawire

In 2020, three key Ghana universities and Russia’s Tomsk Polytechnic University (TPU) will start working together to help Ghanaians train to become engineers, physicists, doctors and researchers.

The nuclear education programs are supported by Russia’s ROSATOM, with the Russian Ministry of Higher Education and Science managing the scholarships. It is based on an agreement between Ghana Atomic Energy Commission (GAEC) and TPU. Ghana has nuclear energy ambitions it hopes to fulfill in the next 10 to 15 years, ROSATOM said.

“We are happy to see among our partners University of Ghana, Kumasi Technical University and Kwame Nkrumah University of Energy and Natural Resource, which implement nuclear education programs,” said Oleg Dolmatov, Director of School of Nuclear Science & Engineering at TPU.

TPU is the only Russian university equipped with an IRT-T nuclear research reactor available for foreign students to conduct research and experiments. In over 60 years, more than 12,000 specialists graduated from TPU, including 8,000 trained in nuclear engineering and research.

“About 300 students from more than 15 African countries are already studying nuclear specialties in Russia,” said Valery Karezin, the ROSATOM director for educational projects. “We also contribute to the development of higher education in the field, strengthening cooperation between higher education institutions in Russia and Africa.”

Those nations include Algeria, Egypt, Zambia, Kenya and Nigeria, according to ROSATOM.

The goal is to boost interest in nuclear projects in Ghana, as well as among young scientists and engineers across Africa trained to apply the technologies in order to boost economic development and implement new solutions.

Image: ROSATOM Africa