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Centre for National Culture launches StuDraFest 2026
The Centre for National Culture (CNC) in the Eastern Region has launched the maiden StuDraFest, an annual drama festival aimed at nurturing creativity, confidence and advocacy skills among Senior High School students through the performing arts.
The initiative sought to provide students with a platform to showcase their talents and craftsmanship while using drama as a tool to address critical social issues affecting communities.
Launching the festival in Koforidua, the Eastern Regional Director of the CNC, Dr Dorcas Salamatu Alhassan, said drama offers students opportunities to explore their abilities in many ways, including developing companionship, building confidence and learning to advocate for positive social change.
“Drama is a powerful tool that can be used to solve social problems. Through this festival, we want students to appreciate our culture and norms and positively influence their communities,” she said.
According to Dr Alhassan, the festival was a revival of an initiative that began in the 1990s and brought teachers and students together under one umbrella to use drama and theatre to address community problems and promote culture.
She noted that reviving the event would help the country reflect on areas that require improvement while nurturing students into future advocates and leaders.
“When it comes to advocacy, students often do it better than adults. We want to train them to become actors of future advocacy who will in turn nurture others from generation to generation and preserve our values and cultural norms,” she said.
She said StuDraFest forms part of students’ extra-curricular activities and would expose them to drama, visual arts and other performing arts disciplines.
Dr Alhassan added that there was ample evidence that children thrive in vast learning environments and that participation in drama helps overcome timidity, opens their minds and improves their confidence.
She noted that initiatives such as StuDraFest could have been effectively used during the COVID-19 pandemic to educate communities and promote behavioural change.
The Regional Director urged patrons to dedicate themselves to training their students adequately to ensure impressive performances during the competition.
StuDraFest is designed to enable students to write, direct and perform original plays aimed at preserving, developing, promoting and disseminating Ghana’s cultural heritage, fostering national unity, shaping the identity and future of the youth, creating wealth and projecting Ghana’s identity globally.
The Head of Performing and Literary Arts at the CNC, Mr Emmanuel Nyarko, took patrons through the competition guidelines, requirements and awards to be presented based on the performances of participating schools.
A workshop was also organised for participating schools to equip them with the necessary information on the competition.
A total of 11 Senior High Schools are expected to participate in the Eastern regional contest. They include Pope John’s Senior High School, Oti Boateng Senior High School, Oyoko Senior High School and Koforidua Senior High Technical School, among others.
The competition is scheduled to take place on July 23 at the main auditorium of the Centre for National Culture in Koforidua.
From Ama Tekyiwaa Ampadu Agyeman, Koforidua
The Ghana Health Service (GHS) will undertake a nationwide Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination exercise in schools from October to December 2026 to protect eligible girls against cervical cancer and other HPV related diseases.
The exercise, organised in collaboration with the Ghana Education Service (GES) and its partners through the School Health Education Programme (SHEP), will be conducted in two rounds.
The first round is scheduled for October 19 to 23, 2026, while the second will take place from November 30 to December 4, 2026.
In a press release dated October 19, the GHS explained that health workers would visit schools across the country to vaccinate eligible girls aged 9 to 14 who have not yet received the HPV vaccine.
The exercise forms part of efforts to raise awareness about the routine HPV vaccine, increase vaccination uptake and strengthen the country’s routine immunisation programme.
The GHS has called on school authorities, parents, guardians, teachers and community leaders to cooperate with health teams to ensure the successful implementation of the exercise.
The Service reaffirmed its commitment to protecting the health and well-being of Ghanaians, particularly children, through vaccination and other public health interventions.
By: Jacob Aggrey
Vice President Professor Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang has held high-level discussions with organisers of the 2026 Global South Academic Forum in Shanghai, seeking to draw lessons from China’s acclaimed rural revitalisation and poverty reduction drive.
The meeting, led by the Forum Chair, Professor Lu Xinyu, explored practical areas of cooperation and knowledge exchange between Ghana and China, with focus on community-driven development, fisheries and aquaculture, local governance, sports initiatives, and infrastructure development.
According to officials, the engagement is part of a broader effort by the Ghanaian government to study tested development models that can be adapted to the local context to promote inclusive growth, empower local communities, and improve livelihoods across the country.
China’s success in lifting over 800 million people out of poverty through targeted rural policies, investment in agriculture and local infrastructure has become a global reference point for developing nations.
The Vice President’s team says insights from the Forum will help inform policy direction, particularly in strengthening decentralised governance, boosting the fisheries and aquaculture sector, and investing in community-level infrastructure and youth sports development.
Professor Opoku-Agyemang is expected to continue engagements with academic and development institutions while in China.
By Edem Mensah-Tsotorme
