On August 29, 2009 Ashesi Broke ground on its new campus. Hundreds of local and international supporters gathered to celebrate the new campus for Ashesi University in Ghana. On this campus, Ashesi University will expand its work of educating the ethical and entrepreneurial leaders that Africa urgently needs. The traditional Ghanaian Durbar ceremony brought together a wide range of Africans from entrepreneurs to village elders, to celebrate a locally founded university designed to launch a new era of locally led progress. Honorable guests included the Ghanaian Minster of Education, the United States Ambassador to Ghana, a senior investment officer from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the local village chief, and the local representative to Parliament.
Read all about it by clicking the Groundbreaking link at the top of the page or by clicking here
On August 29th, we broke ground for our new campus in Berkuso. It was a terrific event, well attended, full of joy and appreciation for the change Ashesi has made to date in Africa and the anticipation of what it can do in the future. We had great attendance, and for Ghana it was a cool, breezy day. The campus is sited beautifully on the top of a hill that overlooks Accra, the ocean, and the surrounding hills. A road has now been cut up the road, and bulldozers and crews have been working hard the last several days to prepare the site for the event.
The ceremony opened with the village Chief’s arrival and a ceremonial greeting between the visitors and invited dignitaries. We had on hand, in addition to the Berkuso chief and his entourage, the minister of education, the local MP, the local director of the international finance corporation, and the US ambassador to Ghana. The Chief started things off. He went through the history of the land acquisition, and indicated the community had turned down other offers because they felt a college would have a more positive impact on the community. The MP even indicated he was looking forward to coming to guest lecture on the new campus in the future. Kyle Kelhofer, of the IFC, gave a terrific talk about the impact of liberal arts colleges. He even drew analogy to his own experience going to a liberal arts college on a hill (in his case Dartmouth). Yaw Asare-Aboagy, who also serves with me on the board of trustees, discussed the various people who helped to support the school to this point. Patrick talked about how Ashesi got to this point—from idea to business plan to classes in rented buildings to impactful graduates. He talked about his wife Rebecca’s support for his “crazy idea”. Then we broke some sod in a big group, and a plaque was unveiled commemorating the event.
Here are a few of the good photos captured (thanks also to Joanne Bargeson and David Cornfield some of the photos are theirs)
On Tuesday, the Ashesi donors from the US headed out to Elmina, both to see the beach community and to visit Cape Coast castle. On the way, we stopped to meet one of our outstanding graduates, the valedictorian in the class of ‘07, Araba Amusai. Araba was a computer science major at Ashesi. She had a number of lucrative private sector offers to become the chief of operations of the Village of Hope orphanage.
How did a computer science major who attended on financial aid decide to forsake the traditional job market in favor of the Orphonage? She was impacted by a class (which we got to sit in on monday) called leadership seminar 4. In the class, which students take in their senior year, they undertake a tangible community service project. For Araba, that was working at the Orphanage. She realized that through the Village of Hope she had the potential to transform lives.
Village of hope is not just home and family (the kids are grouped with a house mother and house father)for about 250 kids; but also provides education through middle school for its students and the surrounding community, and a local health center. The education is more rigorous than the public system, as evidenced by all 35 students (9 of which were from the orphanage) who took the high school entrance exam who all passed with distinction (putting them in the top 5% of all students who took the exam in Ghana).
Araba’s vision is to transform primary school education in Ghana, starting at the Village of Hope. She looks both at improving the pedagogy as well as working to make the whole operation more efficient. Patrick Awuah was with us, and she and Patrick were exchanging information on how to get the best price on internet access for an institution, and Patrick was asking Araba about how the operations work to run an integrated health center that serves the community outside the compound—similar to what we envision on Ashesi’s permanent campus.
All in all, a well run place being enhanced by an Ashesi student with a passion for leading change in the systems of West Africa.
A few pictures from the village of hope:
Outside the Village houses
Ruth is shown the closets where the boys keep their things in the dormitory.
The Ashesi vision has been about growing the next generation of entrepreneurial leaders. Based on the breakfast this morning that we had with a set of Ashesi alums, I can say the we are wildly exceeding the expectations that I had when I first became involved. Ashesi alums are involved across a wide set of activities. As we have talked about in the Ashesi literature all (100%) of our alums have found good positions or gone on to graduate school within a year of graduation. The people we talked to this morning are having an impact, not just in Ghana, but across the continent of Africa.
I talked with 3 Ashesi graduates at breakfast this morning, Angela, who works for SAS in corporate finance helping businesses with private placement. She indicated that despite the economic slowdown, demand for loans to start businesses remained strong. All of the graduates indicated that the US slowdown was affecting Africa, due to two factors: first US business scaling back developing world investment to consolidate and focus; as well as the reduction of remittances by African diasporas back to locals. Angela said recently she had been doing lots of work on new hotel financing. She thinks many of the recent pan-African conferences, entrepreneurs are feeling optimistic about convention and tourism business.
Patrick, who I talked with works at Price Waterhouse Coopers. His major was in MIS systems at Ashesi, and he is the first person at PWC to focus on security audits in west Africa. He really enjoys what he is doing and is looking to do broader systems analysis work. He also gets good exposure to other business and government leaders in West Africa. He talked about how he was particularly impressed with the president of Gabon and his attention to detail. The president always looks at the rest rooms first to gauge whether his people are on top of it. Patrick Awuah was with us, and he said he uses quality of the rest rooms and the upkeep of the garden as an indicator of whether things are being run with operational efficiency.
Charles who was with us works as a policy analyst for a number of African countries, including Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Rwanda. All at the table are particularly impressed with the progress being made in Rwanda. They talked about the leadership having both vision and a drive for operational results. They agreed one of the big issues leadership in Africa have in making development happen is tying the vision to first steps to get things done. One thing they all felt was that Africa was moving beyond its strongman past of leaders more in it for themselves than the country. They felt optimistic that generally the leaders want the best for the countries they lead; but many are missing the skills and operational infrastructure to make change happen. In this way, its why what we are doing at Ashesi is so important. Its enabling that human capital to drive change. I know these alumni from this morning will make it happen.
On our first day we had the opportunity to meet with Derry Dadzie from DreamOval. DreamOval is an IT business created by 3 ashesi alums. It actually has its origins in a software engineering club that existed on the Ashesi campus. The founders worked together on a senior project that involved creating a smart traffic light that would better manage data. This harkened me back to another pair of software entrepreneurs who got their start building traffic related software that evolved into something else.
Derry Dadzie (with the tie) with Ashesi Board member Yaw Asare-Aboagye, and Volunteer Kristi Helgeson
DreamOval is building an ecommerce platform for payments and banking on sms sand with mobile phones. They also have helped sms enable banking and other IT systems within Ghana. They currently have 7 total employees and are cash flow positive. They are doing projects for many of the large companies within Ghana, and are working on a special project to enable nurses with mobile phones for the Grameen foundation. Their dream is to build out their platform and make a broader difference with software for people in Africa.
Derry is one of the highest initiative young people I have met in a long time. He showed initiative at a very young age. He organized a local group when he was about 11 to do good in his neighborhood. He wrote articles on business and economics as a teenager—he knew he wanted to start something and grow it big. Someone suggested he look at Ashesi, as it was a place focused on growing entrepreneurial leaders. He was afraid to apply; because as a private institution, he wasn’t sure he could afford it. He’s glad he did. He received a combination of scholarships, aid, and loans that enabled him to attend–as do about half of our students. He was very active as a student; and loved the opportunity Ashesi afforded—and he took advantage of what it had to offer. He and his colleagues have already given back to Ashesi both in kind and directly. Very inspiring.
My family (Ruth, Rachel, Sam and myself, Todd Warren) arrived in Ghana yesterday. Today we spent the day on a tour of Ashesi. You can see the entrance to the university and the tour group meeting with Matt Taggert of Ashesi above. I’ve been on the board since 2001—before we started classes, and visited about 3 years ago to see the campus. It’s amazing to see how it has matured as a university. Today was also the first day of classes, and we have the new class of 150. Like all campuses on the first day, Ashesi’s first day was filled with returning students reconnecting and reuniting. The energy on campus was overwhelmingly positive.
One thing that’s changed from 3 years ago is that campus has added a third rented building. You can see that in the map here
As you can probably discern from the map, the
campus is relatively spread out. It’s located in the Labone section of Accra, and there are a mix for residences and small businesses that surround it. We had a great
Q&A with Patrick and Lunch with the senior staff. The two highlights for me were the meeting with Derry Dadzie from DreamOval, a company founded by Ashesi, and then dicussions with Ashesi students and some of their projects. I will make seperate posts about those two things.
Site of new campus, 100 acres in the hills above Accra in the village of Berekuso
After 7 years of delivering a great education in simple rented buildings, Ashesi will break ground on a permanent campus home! We expect a good crowd at a traditional Ghanaian Durbar ceremony in the rural community of Berekuso.
Some Ashesi friends are traveling to Ghana for the week leading up to the groundbreaking ceremony. We’ll meet with Ashesi faculty and leadership, visit graduates at their workplace, and watch students present their projects.
This blog will be a place where visitors can share photos and impressions, and where Ashesi friends who were unable to join the trip can post questions or comments.
Village of Hope, where an Ashesi grad is Operations Officer, revamping their curriculum
Watching Ashesi Graduates at Work
To see, first-hand, the New Africa that the Ashesi community is working so hard to bring about, we’ll visit three Ashesi graduates at their workplaces.
We’ll visit tech-startup Dream oval a software company that is developing new payment and communications technologies for African businesses. Their product iWallet began as an Ashesi student project.
We’ll go to the Village of Hope orphanage, (kids shown above) where an Ashesi grad is now operations manager. She is revamping the curriculum away from memorization, teaching the children math and critical thinking skills, how to use technology, and to prepare for a strong future.
DreamOval founders create mobile business software
And we’ll visit a graduate at Astrient Foundation, a non-profit that supports the dissemination of technical knowledge, software and expertise in disadvantaged communities.
