By Akol Madut Ngong
The Minister of Higher Education Gabriel Changson Chang has challenged students to be innovative.
Minister Chang was speaking on Wednesday 6th April 2022, during the first Convention of South Sudan Students’ Union held at freedom Hall.
He said the policy of the Ministry of High Education is to develop quality education for quality human resource.
“I challenge you to do more for the sake of our country and for the sake of our people. Example, water, bottle, pen, pencil, telephone and so forth, who discovered them? They were discovered by individual people like you, why don’t you advance to that field of education and discover things that will benefit the people of South Sudan,” he stressed.
“Always I said, if you want to do research, do it properly, if you have that negative thinking, you will not do that thing but if you belief in yourself that you are able to do, do its successfully jointly or individually, this is what we expect from you in the Ministry of Higher Education,” he stated.
“The Country Director of World Bank challenges us to make education priority number one, giving example of Vietnam, saying South Sudan is similar with Vietnam but Vietnam as we speak has become number seven in the whole world,” Chang continued.
If we do the same, we will be there but if you ignore and say how can we do it, we don’t have resources that is not the issue, resources are here, let us work toward that goal.
“We have a project with the country Director of World Bank and with Dallaires International Management Institute, that project is for you, it’s about you, it is about the country and its people” Chang also said.
“We want to digitalize agriculture, health services and IT, that project is going to be funded by the World Bank and team up with Dallaires International Institute, how is it going to benefit you? We are going to recruit about 3,000 to 4,000 students across the country to study that programme to improve our agricultural production and productivity to combat food insecurity,” Chang said.
“We are establishing ten centres, these centres will be located in your universities, one in Juba University, John Garang, Upper Nile, Bahr el Ghazal then Yambio and Torit Institute of technology, Northern Bahr el Ghazal Institute of Health Sciences, Bentiu Institute of Petroleum and Gas then we will open another one to make them ten in Kuajok to make fair distribution across the ten states,” Cang highlighted.
Finally, “I would like to announce full scholarship to two artists: Isaac Kaluma Gabriel popularly known as Isaka Number one who was a student in the University of Juba, College of Arts and Music, Department of music, he started his Artistic work in 2007 and Comedian Kuech Deng Atem known as Wokil Jeskomando who was a Student in the Starford International College, faculty of Computer Science, he started his comedy in 2014”.
“I belief, our two Artists, we want to encourage them to go for further studies, I’m offering full scholarship for them to go for the post graduate studies regardless of where they came from, we are going to consider you effectively,” Chang stated.