Class of 2025 Cohort B, on behalf of the Ashesi Community, I accept your promise to respect and uphold the values of the Ashesi University. Welcome to Ashesi. It is great to meet you in person as vaccines have enabled us to return to campus in the face of the Covid pandemic. As we formally welcome you to this community, I would like to share a few thoughts to set the stage for your next four years here.
Over the course of orientation week and during this matriculation ceremony, you have heard a lot about the Ashesi Community. You’ve heard our institution described as a family. You’ve heard about a shared ownership of our vision, our mission, and our institution. I would like to share with you, the words of a Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu, whose words inform my leadership style, and explain what you have observed thus far about how our institution operates.
“A leader is best when people barely know he exists. When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.”
We have a shared vision the transformation we would like to see in Ghana and Africa, and a shared responsibility in achieving that vision. Ashesi’s mission is not about individual leadership, it is about collective leadership. I hope that during your time here, you will embrace this philosophy of what constitutes good leadership and let it guide your decisions and actions here. I also hope that as you enter this institution, you give some thought to what you will do, individually and corporately as a class, to add to Ashesi excellence. This is a charge I make to all entering classes because it is a great way to determine some purpose to guide you on your journey.
During orientation, I tried to illustrate Ashesi’s mission by inviting you to join me a thought exercise about two hypothetical societies: A dystopia, where everyone is dishonest all the time; and a utopia, where everyone is honest and diligent. I argued that in the former, there would be so little trust that citizens would not be able to work together to build anything of substance, whereas the utopian society would have so much trust that they could build great things together: government, businesses, schools, hospitals, infrastructure, etc. Although we don’t see completely dystopian and utopian societies on Earth, we can deduce from this thought exercise that we should seek to lean towards building a high integrity, high trust society. Ashesi University is playing a role in this endeavour by educating the citizens and future leaders of Africa who have the character to help tilt our society in that better direction.
During my conversation with you, someone asked whether I really believed we could build a utopian society, and if so, how long it would take to achieve. We cannot achieve a perfect society, but I do believe we can make great strides towards building a good society. As I said during orientation week, I do not know how long it will take, but I do know that if we set our minds to it, if we decide to create a high trust society, we can achieve it.
How many of you have heard the saying, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step?" Let’s see a show of hands.
Most of you know these words from Lao Tzu. Let me share a fuller version of Lao Tzu’s words:
“Do the difficult things while they are easy, and the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.”
Remember these words. Here are Ashesi, we have a vision of a great society in Africa –a high trust, compassionate, high-performance society. We imagine the great things you will do in your lives, and we’re dedicated to guiding you to achieve these goals. I urge you to do the difficult things while they are easy, and the great things while they are small. I urge you to take the first step here, and to keep walking.
The honour system that you will ultimately participate in here; the engineering systems that you design and build here; and the business solutions that you design here, are all examples of the first steps you will be taking towards becoming the citizens and leaders our society needs. If you engage this task with diligence and never stop moving forward with your mission in life, then when you reach my age, you will look back and see a future generation of students say, “We did it! We did it ourselves.”
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