INDUCTION OF PROF. LINUS ABRAHAM AS RECTOR ... - Kitnes.net

INDUCTION OF PROF. LINUS ABRAHAM AS RECTOR OF NAFTI
Welcome Address
by Prof. Kofi Anyidoho
Chairman, NAFTI Board of Governors
Special Guest of Honour Mr. Fritz Baffour, Honourable Minister for Information,
Professor Osam, Pro Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Legon, Your
Excellencies the Ambassador of France Monsieur Frederick Clavier, Deputy Head of
Mission and Acting German Ambassador Mr Thomas Wimmer, Deputy High
Commissioner of Australia Madame Susan Ulrich, Members of NAFTI’s immediate past
and current Board of Governors, Distinguished Special Guests, Faculty, Staff, and
Students of NAFTI, Ladies and Gentlemen, with a sense of pride and special delight, I
welcome you all to today’s Induction Ceremony for Professor Linus Abraham as Rector,
the 6 th Chief Executive of NAFTI.
NAFTI’s remarkable success story, especially in the decade or so following its
establishment by SMC Decree 151(1978), is a story worth telling again and again. It is
the story of a premier school of its kind, which in a short time, produced skilled media
personnel for Ghana and for Sub-Saharan Africa. In 1982, barely four years after its
establishment, NAFTI became the first African media institute to be admitted into full
membership of CILECT, the International Association of Film and Television Academies
and Universities. In 1984, UNESCO formally endorsed NAFTI as the Africa Regional
Film and Television Training Institute. it is also a success story that depended very
heavily on the generosity of development partners, especially the Friedrich Ebert
Foundation of Germany, to which the Institute owed the supply and renewal of its
equipment stock as well as opportunities for the training and retraining of its teaching
and technical staff. NAFTI’s misfortunes began when German government policy
changed the mandate of the Foundation, making further support impossible. The
Government of Ghana continued to provide NAFTI with a standard budget for
emoluments and routine administrative expenditure, but with little or no capital
investment, the NAFTI story suffered a major reversal of fortunes.

On December 1, 2009, when the immediate past Board of Governors was inaugurated,
the Board was confronted with an Institute in a state of serious depression: a national
media training institute operating with obsolete, malfunctioning analogue equipment in a
digital age; a faculty and staff with several of them on post-retirement contract, partly
because their conditions of service were so poor that several adverts for new
recruitment yielded no responses; a student population with very little support for their
projects; an institute which had not had a Board of Governors for almost eight years. As
pointed out by Mr. Martin Loh in his handing-over notes as Director, “Many issues
concerning the appointment and renewal of contracts could not be resolved because
the Board was not in place.” I take this opportunity to place on record my gratitude to my
colleagues on the immediate past Board of Governors (Mr. Paul Effah, Mr. Francis
Gbormittah, Mr. Moses Gyapong, Mr. Ernest Abbeyquaye, Mr. Koffi Nartey, and Mr.
G.B.L. Sillo) for the dedication with which they worked to help bring renewed hope to
NAFTI.
I must also add that the challenges that faced the Board would have been very difficult
to deal with without the appointment of Prof. Linus Abraham as Acting Rector. At the
inauguration of the current Board of Governors a few months ago, thanks to the
tremendous drive with which Prof. Abraham, his management team, faculty, staff and
students, have worked over the past two years, the new Board found a new NAFTI
ready to take off into some very bold and exciting directions. I leave it to Prof. Abraham
to share with us a brief outline of NAFTI’s new success story and plans for an even
greater future. Indeed, there are still some unresolved challenges, especially regarding
the situation and conditions of service for the faculty and staff, but I have no doubt that
the new board will do its best to support Prof. Abraham and his administration in various
efforts that have already been initiated towards possible solutions to some of these
outstanding challenges.
Two major projects await urgent government attention and support, and I must, on
behalf of the Board of Governors and Management of NAFTI, appeal to the Honourable
Minister for Information, for his personal assistance in helping to make a case for us
with his colleagues in government. The first project is the upgrading of NAFTI

infrastructure, equipment, faculty and staff, for which a master design and detailed
drawings have been concluded, pending cabinet and parliamentary approval of funding
for work to begin. There is also the NAFTI Media Arts School Project, as proposed in a
detailed recommendation submitted by a committee set up by the Ministry of
Information. Ghana stands to gain many important benefits from the implementation of
these two projects.
Before I sit down, I wish to formally welcome to our midst, two special guests from
NAFTI’s partner institutions in Europe, Prof. Klaus Jung the Rector of Academy of
Media Arts (KHM) in Cologne Germany, and Prof. Lars Lundsten who is representing
Prof. Henrik Wolf, the Rector of Arcada Polytechnic, Finland. NAFTI has enjoyed
significant support from various partners, especially the Goethe-Institut, our next door
neighbours, the French Embassy, the Australian Embassy, the GET Fund, and many
others. I hope there will be space in the Rector’s address for a fuller acknowledgement
of the help which we have received from all our partners, and from the Government of
Ghana for its continued budgetary support.
As we move towards the formal investiture of Prof. Linus Abraham as Rector of NAFTI, I
must acknowledge his predecessors: Mr. Henry H. Hemans-Mensah (1978-80), Mr.
Edward K. Abebrese (1980-82), Mr. Kweku Adu-Gyamfi Opoku (1982-84), Mr. Bill
Marshall (1984-95), Mr. Martin Loh (1995-2010) for the foundation work done over the
years.
Thank you