President John Mahama has announced that plans to construct a 10,000-bed student hostel at the University of Ghana were far advanced.
He said if completed, the hostel facility will help ease the accommodation challenges facing students and improve their safety.
He disclosed this while speaking at the opening ceremony of the University of Ghana’s 77th Annual New Year School and Conference on Tuesday, January 6, 2026.
According to him, the hostel project follows an agreement signed during a recent visit to Singapore and will be delivered using prefabricated building technology.
“When I went to Singapore, we signed an agreement for a 10,000-student hostel in the University of Ghana,” President Mahama disclosed. “This is going to be a prefabricated building. It means the building will be manufactured somewhere and then assembled on campus.”
He said the machinery for the factory that will manufacture the hostel components has been shipped from Singapore and is currently en route to Accra.
He referenced a recent social media post by academic Professor Kweku Azar, who compared his university experience to the difficulties faced by today’s students.
“He talked about how, in his time, you could simply walk to the porter’s lodge, your name would be checked, you’d be handed your room key, and that was it,” the president recounted. “Today, most of our students have to live off campus and travel to lectures every day.”
“There have been a few unfortunate incidents where students have either been knocked down by vehicles and died or, in some cases, been attacked by armed robbers and lost their lives,” he said. “It is preferable that we have as many of our students living on campus, or as close to campus as possible.”
The 77th Annual New Year School and Conference, hosted by the University of Ghana, is being held under the theme “Building the Ghana We Want, Together for Sustainable Development.”
