“Sustainable development requires both the sciences and the arts to work together and complement each other for execution of development agendas,” according to Professor Samuel Sefa-Dedeh, vice president of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Speaking on the sidelines of the academy’s recent conference on Sustainable African Cities held in Accra, Ghana during the first week of July, Sefa-Dedeh said the arts and sciences cannot work in isolation and their amalgamation is necessary in sustainable development. 

He said innovations developed by university academics and researchers from the scientific world in fields such as agriculture, health and engineering need academics from the arts to help the public and policy makers make sense of research and find mechanisms to roll out technologies. 

Sefa-Dedeh said that the academy has sought to develop its service to Ghana through collaborations with other national bodies on the essential issues affecting science and humanities, governance, and the formulation and implementation of policies. 

The academy has also established formal and informal links with Ghanaian universities that enable collaboration on a number of activities concerning research and development. 

“We have also undertaken assessment of issues especially in the higher education sector making workable recommendations for improvement,” noted Sefa-Dedeh. He said the academy had, for example, registered its concerns over requirements for the pre-university science and mathematics courses, which were now drawing larger numbers of students to the fields.

Delegates at the conference, organised by the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences in collaboration with the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, Network of African Science Academies and the Academy of Science of South Africa, endorsed the need for increased interaction and collaboration between the arts and sciences to enable Africa to find local solutions to challenges facing urbanisation on the continent.

Sefa-Dedeh called on governments in Africa to support academies which could, through think tanks and other fora, respond to a range of emerging development challenges such as climate change.

He challenged other academies in Africa to form smart collaborations and share knowledge to advance development agendas on the continent. “That’s how we can achieve sustainable development: if the humanities and science work together,” said Sefa-Dedeh. 

The Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, which brings together university academics from both the humanities and sciences is relatively unusual in Africa, where academies are usually focused solely on science. 

Like most of the others, the Ghana academy was founded in 1959 as an academy of sciences. A decade later, in recognition of the valuable role of the arts and humanities in Ghana’s future development, it was transformed and renamed the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Its fellows, highly distinguished professors in the arts and sciences, are based at local universities such as the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and the University of Ghana. Representing the academy, such academics give lectures to high school and university students on emerging and current trends in matters of national and international development.

After it was renamed, the academy focused on promoting the study, extension and dissemination of knowledge of both the arts and sciences, and establishing and maintaining proper standards of endeavour in all fields of the arts and sciences. Additionally, it recognises outstanding contributions to the advancement of the arts and sciences in Ghana.

In her book on the history of the academy, Dr Letitia Obeng argues that even though the word ‘arts’ had originally been omitted from the name of the academy, its original aims placed equal emphasis on the sciences and humanities. 

“The academy cannot separate the humanities from the sciences even if the word ‘arts’ was not reflected in its name,” said Obeng.

She said the arts fellows have contributed significantly to the development of Ghanaian local languages such as the Twi language whose dictionary was written by fellows of the academy.

She said the academy’s J B Danquah Memorial Lecture series instituted in 1969 and which were initially limited to subjects of law, philosophy and literature had been reorganised to include both the humanities and sciences.