Hungary as part of its commitment to support brilliant but needy students, has increased the number of scholarships for Ghanaian students from 50 to 100, beginning September 2020.
As part of the initiative, the President of Hungary would visit Ghana in January 2020 to finalise discussions on the scheme and open applications in September 2020.
The initiative is to provide educational opportunities to Ghanaian students to acquire skills and knowledge and contribute meaningfully to the country’s socio-economic growth.
The grant package covers payment of accommodation, full tuition, feeding and monthly stipends.
Mr Andras Szabo, the Hungarian Ambassador to Ghana, announced this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency in Accra during the visit of Dr Tristan Azbej, the State Secretary in charge of Hungary Helps Humanitarian Aid Programme to Ghana.
Ghana and Hungary signed the Education Cooperation Agreement in 2016, which guaranteed at least 50 scholarships each year for Ghanaian students to study in Hungary.
Hungary officially re-opened its diplomatic mission in Ghana in April 2016, after it was closed in 1987 due to financial constraints and following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The first Embassy was opened in Accra in 1961.
He said Hungary was committed to support achieve ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’ agenda and explore ways of cooperation between the two countries for mutual benefits especially for the poor in society.
“We believe that empowering the youth with the needed educational foundation and setting up social programmes for their livelihoods will liberate them from their poor state to a more befiting life”,he added.
The Ambassador said migration for greener pastures had become a global phenomenon especially in the developing countries which poses serious threat to country’s security space, and that their outfit believed that empowering the young through technical and humanitarian assistance would ameliorate the situation.
He said‘if a village is out of young people, that village cannot prosper anymore, so we want to empower them to be productive and stay in their own village.
“We want to improve skills technology and help in other sectors of the economy including; agriculture, engineering and technical education and make them useful in their various communities to prevent rural-urban migration and migration to other countries”.
Dr Lawrence Tetteh, an Economist trained in Hungary commended the contribution of Hungary government in helping Ghanaian and African students to attain higher education for national development.
He encouraged Ghanaians to take advantage of the opportunity and maximised the full benefits of the scholarship scheme for their growth.
