President John Dramani Mahama has launched the Ghana National Research Fund (GNRF), describing it as central to Ghana’s national transformation agenda and a long-overdue response to the structural gap in the country’s research financing.
Speaking at the launch, President Mahama said research had moved beyond being a peripheral activity and must now be understood as one of the engines driving economic growth, social progress, and national competitiveness.
“Ghana cannot aspire to industrial transformation while underinvesting in knowledge creation,” he said.
The President traced the fund’s roots to the earliest years of Ghana’s independence, noting that Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah had recognised that science, technology, and research were indispensable to economic transformation and national self-reliance.
He said Nkrumah understood that a nation seeking to industrialise could not indefinitely rely on imported knowledge and solutions but had to build the capacity to generate its own ideas and solve its own challenges.
President Mahama also acknowledged the late President John Evans Atta Mills as the original visionary behind the fund, saying the launch had brought his dream to fruition.
He credited the previous Akufo-Addo administration for piloting Act 1056 of 2020 through Parliament, which provided the legislative foundation for the fund.
He said Ghanaian researchers had shown remarkable resilience despite years of limited resources, competing and publishing globally on skimpy budgets.
Too many, he said, had been forced to rely on fragmented funding, short-term project cycles, and external grants that often determined research priorities from outside Ghana’s borders.
“That model is insufficient for a country seeking to industrialise, modernise agriculture, improve healthcare, digitise public services, and compete in a rapidly evolving global economy,” he said.
The fund’s priority areas include food system transformation and agricultural resilience, health innovation and biosecurity, digital and industrial transformation, climate and environmental sustainability, and governance, data, and social systems.
President Mahama said the fund directly supports the government’s 24-hour economy initiative and accelerated exports development programme, as well as its ambitions to modernise agriculture, expand manufacturing, advance digital transformation, and promote renewable energy.
He pointed to the success of existing research institutions as proof of what sustained investment can achieve, citing the West Africa Centre for Crop Improvement, the West Africa Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens, and the West African Genetic Medicine Centre as examples of institutions that have produced globally recognised discoveries and enhanced Ghana’s reputation as a centre of research excellence.
“The objective is not simply to produce more research. The objective is to produce research that solves problems, informs policy, creates jobs, strengthens industries, and improves the lives of Ghanaians,” he said.
Richard Aniagyei, ISD
