The Otumfuo during his suriname visit
OVER 20,000 students have benefitted from the ‘Otumfuo Education Fund’, since the fund was created.
The headquarters of the education fund is based in Kumasi, yet the beneficiaries are scattered all over Ghana.
The Asante Monarch, who has a passion for education, created the fund with the intention of supporting students without discrimination.
The main focus of the Otumfuo Education Fund is to see a Ghana with proper human resources to speed up the country’s development.
Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, the Asantehene, made this known during a public lecture in Suriname in South America, where he had visited recently.
According to him, education is very important if Africa can overcome its challenges and become a self-reliant continent in future.
He said: “I therefore set up the Otumfuo Education Fund when I ascended the Golden Stool to help to properly educate our youth, the future leaders. So far, statistics show that over 20,000 students from the various tribes and from all levels of education to the university level have benefitted”.
He said traditional leaders remain very important when it comes to the development of the state. He disclosed that aside from the education fund, he has set up the Teachers Awards aimed at rewarding hard-working teachers annually.
Otumfuo asserted that he has established the ‘Otumfuo Osei Tutu Charity Foundation’ to tackle sanitation, health and water problems in society.
He also disclosed that he once sought support from the World Bank to embark on several developmental projects in rural areas in Ghana.
The World Bank’s support, he said, had led to massive infrastructural development in education, health, availability of potable water, among others, in some rural areas in Ghana.
The public lecture was under the theme: ‘The Role of a Traditional King in a Contemporary Modern State’. The event was massively attended.
FROM I.F. Joe Awuah Jnr., Kumasi