Your Excellencies.
The Honourable Member of Parliament.
Members of the Boards of Trustees and Directors. Dr. Patrick Awuah.
Faculty and staff.
Friends and family.
And most importantly, the Class of 2026.
Good morning.
It is truly an honour to be here today.
I want to start by simply saying: congratulations to the 333 members of the undergraduate Class of 2026 and the 26 members of the Master’s in Mechatronic Engineering class of 2025 , and to your families who have made it possible for you to be here today. You’ve made it to the finishing line of this long marathon, and you can be very proud of yourselves.
As only the second Ashesi alum to serve as commencement speaker in the history of this university, I am also one of just two Ashesi commencement speakers who can confidently say that I know what it has taken from you and your families to get here. The shift in mindset and habits required to go from a Ghanaian or African high school to excel at Ashesi can be challenging at best and crippling at worst. I know, I’ve been there.
I know what it’s like to be ambushed by a pop quiz on a Tuesday morning when you’re absolutely not ready because in secondary school, the exams waited till the end of the term.
I know the steep learning curve one has to climb in order to submit a 1,500-word essay for Text and Meaning class when the longest thing you’ve written since primary school is your WASSCE social studies paper on the “benefits of Ghanaian funerals”.
I know the discipline it takes to manage your time properly so you have room for extracurricular activities such as the CFA Challenge or the Global Sustainability Supply Chain Competition while completing all your assignments, attending every class and remembering to call your mother, who is constantly asking why you don’t call home.
But now that I’m a parent myself, I also know what it has taken from your parents financially, emotionally and physically.
Many of them had hidden the fact that there were semesters where they didn’t know how they’d pay your fees but found a way somehow at the very last minute.
Or the nights they gave up sleep pray fervently that you’d make the most of your time at Ashesi.
For some of you, I can almost guarantee that somewhere in your homes, there are tear-soaked pillows courtesy of the day you came home from school with a nose ring or dyed hair, and your mother looked at you and thought to herself: “Is this what they are teaching them at Ashesi?”
But the battle has ended. You are at the finish line. Or perhaps the starting line? What is sure is that today, as you cross this stage, it marks the end of your undergraduate training and your induction into the fellowship of Ashesi graduates tasked with representing this hallowed institution in the “real world”. But to what end? For what reason have you been trained? The all-important question.
I stumbled across a statistic recently that gave me pause and perhaps should give you pause too.
According to the UN’s World Education Statistics report, only 7 in 10 Ghanaian adults have a primary school education. 6 in 10 have a junior high school education, but only 2 in 10 have a senior secondary school education. Just 1 in 10 Ghanaian adults has any form of tertiary education, and this figure includes post-secondary short courses, diplomas, and certificates. If you were to isolate the number of Ghanaian adults with a university degree, that number would be 5%, or 1 in 20 people. This figure tracks with the African average.
The implications of these data are very interesting. For me, it underscores the fact that no matter your socioeconomic background, when you walk across this stage today, you will become part of a relatively small and highly privileged group of Ghanaians and Africans who have had the benefit of a university education.
Furthermore, you, my friends in the class of 2026, have had the added benefit of an Ashesi education, an education that I can boldly tell you with the benefit of 16 years of post-graduation hindsight, is not only world-class, but perhaps more importantly, purposefully designed for our Ghanaian and African context. A privilege that fewer than 400 Africans receive each year.
To some, this is a source of personal pride.
To others, this is something to “cash in” for a 6-figure salary, a house in a gated community, 2 kids and a swimming pool.
Worse still, to others, it fosters a deep sense of superiority relative to the less educated or lowly educated among us.
But to those of you who can read the proverbial tea leaves and understand the times we live in, I think this should place upon you a burden of responsibility and a call to leadership for the welfare of your compatriots and the development trajectory AND velocity of your country.
To be clear. What I am not saying is that a university degree generally or an Ashesi University degree specifically, is the be-all and end-all of the African or Ghanaian existence, or that citizens without a university degree, Ashesi or otherwise, have less to contribute to the growth and development of our country; far from it.
What I am saying is that those of us who have benefitted from this kind of education possess a rare set of skills and disciplines that are fundamental to the sociocultural development of our people and without which, our development will be laboured at best and elusive at worst. We would therefore be well advised to embrace that call with humility, boldness and intentionality.
There is a passage in the book of Ephesians Chapter 4 that has shaped how I think about this.
It speaks of the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and the teachers (the church leaders) and it says they are given “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up.”
What I find striking about this scripture is the fact that the church leaders aren’t given any more or less responsibility for the work of “ministry” or service relative to the general citizenry. They are however given the responsibility of ensuring that the citizenry, is tooled and equipped for the service they have been called to. They are given responsibility to build the culture within which the citizenry work by casting the vision (the prophets), growing the movement (the evangelists), caring for the citizenry (the Shepherds or Pastors) and training and instructing the citizenry (the teachers)
That is what I believe you have been trained for here at Ashesi. To provide clarity of purpose where there is none. To recruit more people to the cause of transforming this continent. To show up for people in their most vulnerable moments. To teach, train, and equip those around you to rise to the occasion.
In other words, You are not here simply to succeed. You are here to make success possible for others. For the Ghanaian who never had the opportunities Ashesi made available to you. For the African who has never had your platform. That is your assignment. That is your mission. Every single one of you. And it as a mandate that I urge you to be bold and intentional about in service to your nation and continent.
Now let me tell you why this mandate feels so urgent to me in this moment.
When I was born, Ghana was still a military dictatorship. It would be a few more years before the country transitioned to democracy. Agriculture, driven by cocoa, was the backbone of our economy.
By the late nineties, foreign direct investment in mining and telecoms had made a dent on the economy and was reshaping daily life. with quite a few perks. As an example, TV3, a Malaysian owned TV station launched in 1997 at a time when there was only one TV station; GTV. It was the first privately owned television channel in Ghana. Suddenly, Ghanaians had the option of changing channels. No more “Adult education in Dagbani on government owned GTV. We could watch Sunset Beach on TV3. Life was good.
By 2001, Ghana had witnessed its first ever peaceful transfer of power, and the national mood was up.
The years 2004 to 2011 mark the most prosperous period in our economic history with average GDP growth of 7.25%. I watched just about every family I know move up one or two rungs on the economic ladder.
Many of you were born during this period. Perhaps, as young children, it was easy to take that upward trajectory for granted. But we mustn’t.
For me, those were my Ashesi years. I graduated with the Class of 2010 into a booming economy. GE was hiring. Tullow was hiring. Even Goldman Sachs was hiring from Ashesi. The oil boom, political stability, and a global downturn driving investors towards frontier markets had all conspired in our favour.
Sadly, the next decade would not be nearly as kind.
A disputed election in 2012 left the country at a standstill for eight months.
Then came dumsor. Nearly two years of erratic power supply, coupled with oil at over $100 a barrel.
Then the cedi lost 31% of its value in 2014 while bank lending rates read like basketball scores.
Then commodity prices collapsed — gold fell 45%, cocoa 38%.
A few years later, we’d have to bail out Ghanaian banks at the cost of roughly $5 billion dollars to the Ghanaian taxpayer.
Followed shortly thereafter by COVID-19 which cast a shadow over the Ghanaian and global economy for more than 2 years.
And then of course, the Russia-Ukraine war followed shortly thereafter.
Just when we thought we thought the worst was behind us, Ghana defaulted on its sovereign debt and was forced to restructure its debt through the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme. Institutions and individuals lost billions.
One number drives all of this home. Since 1983, 43 years ago, there have only been five years in which our GDP growth fell below our population growth, i.e. years in which Ghanaians became poorer per capita. Four of those five years have been in your formative years: 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2020.
In essence, What I’m saying is that, in recent memory, I have lived through both some great times and some not-so-great times in Ghana. And sadly, at no point throughout both did I ever get the sense that this country had any clarity of purpose or direction. In this way, Ghana has always felt to me like the tourist who asks for directions on the road. Who relies on the GPS of strangers to find her way. Who will, inevitably, meet a woman on the roadside who tells her “keep walking until you see the kenkey seller, then make a right”. Who then reaches the spot where the Kenkey seller was supposed to be and today, the kenkey seller didn’t come. She then ends up wandering for hours on a journey that could have taken ten minutes.
I continually ask myself whether we know where we are going and whether there is a plan to get there. But the answer unfortunately remains illusive. An entire nation running on “vibes and inshallah”. But Inshallah is a prayer, not a plan, and a nation that confuses the two will pray forever at the same crossroads.
Fast forward to 2026, your graduation year. I can tell you that the forecast is mixed. The Ghanaian economy is now the 8th largest in Africa at $118 billion but undergirded almost entirely by record gold prices. We are still exporting raw cocoa beans instead of chocolate. Still exporting largely unrefined gold and crude oil. The potential of our tourism, fintech, and creative arts sectors remains exactly that, potential. AI presents both a threat to livelihoods and an opportunity for extraordinary leaps in productivity. From Port Sudan on the East Cost of Africa to Conakry on the west, rebel and terrorist groups threaten the stability of the region, with incursions reported along Ghana’s northern border. All this is happening against the backdrop of yet another US-led war in the middle east with no short-term end in sight.
This is the world you are graduating into. And I regret to inform you that I’m not entirely sure that collectively, we have a coherent plan on how to navigate the next decade or a clear vision of the future we want. It’s still giving “vibes and inshallah”.
The good book asks us in Jeremiah 29:7 to seek the prosperity of the city in which we dwell and pray for its prosperity because in its prosperity will we find our prosperity, it underscores the extent to which our personal wellbeing and success is tied to the wellbeing and success of our country. The import of this nugget of wisdom that pursuing the best interest of Ghana may not only be the altruistic thing to do but may actually be in your selfish best interest as you pursue your personal success.
I believe that for any individual, organisation, or country to truly reach its full potential (be successful), it needs to be able to answer three questions which are: Who am I? Where am I going? How do I get there? These are questions of identity, purpose, and direction and they are fundamental to how you show up in the world. The type of leader you will be. The kind of employee you will be. The kind of spouse you will find and the kind of citizen you will be.
I challenge you, Class of 2026, to put those three questions at the centre of everything you do, everything you say, and everything you represent. But I also challenge you to help Ghana do the same, to find her identity, her purpose, and her direction of travel. Because in this precarious moment in world history, I believe it will be crucial to our ability to survive the next decade without being tossed to and fro by every wind.
We often talk about economic development as though economics exists in a vacuum — as though money and GDP are the primary measures of a country’s wellbeing. But an economy is a function of a people’s culture. What they consume, how they consume it, their view of work, the systems of trust that exist within that people group among other things. Culture in turn is made up of what I’ve termed the P.E.A.R.L.S.E (PEARLSE); politics, education, art, religion, laws, science, and economics. These must all develop in unison else we risk lopsided development or none at all. But real cultural development does not happen by accident. It requires the painstaking effort of thought leaders, change agents and custodians of the culture, whose thoughts and actions are informed by their values, and whose values are informed by a clear sense of identity, purpose, and direction.
That, my friends, is you. You ought to think of yourselves as thought leaders, change agents and custodians of culture. That is the weight of responsibility that the degree you are about to receive thrusts upon your shoulders. The weight of being a Cultural influencer.
All of Ghana — all of Africa — awaits your manifestation.
The businesses you build will not just exist to make you rich; they will shape culture and provide hope to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of young people.
The creative projects you work on will not just be for a few TikTok likes. They will raise the bar on what Ghanaian creativity looks like and open doors for a fresh wave of Ghanaian creatives to take their work to the world.
Your research may very well be the source of an economic breakthrough for Ghana, in the same way that the discovery of GLP-1 drugs alone, just one drug, by Novo Nordisk, has revved up the Danish economy.
The burden of responsibility you carry as Ashesi graduates also means you do not get to sit around engaging in idle chatter about “the problem with Ghana or Africa” When everybody else does. You are the ones we are looking to for a solution!
Also, as Ashesi University graduates, you do not get to politicise every development conversation and reduce it to NPP versus NDC. It is beneath you, and this country deserves better from you.
Having saddled you with the weight of responsibility for most of this speech, I would be remiss if I stepped away from this podium without offering at least a few short lessons from my own career that will put you in good stead to be the cultural influencers I’m tasking you to become.
One. The first three years of your career are for learning. Getting rich will come later. There is no such thing as a career mistake in your first three years. The only mistake you can make is to leave without a lesson — so work for the best teacher you can find. You will learn more from your failures than your victories. Be surgical about learning from those failures. The best thing that happened to me was losing the ASC presidential election. But that’s a story for another day.
Two. If you say you are going to do something, do it. It is a waste of everybody’s time to have people double-checking whether you did what you said you would. I call it your say-to-do ratio, and it needs to be 1:1. Be humble enough to admit to yourself what you do not know, smart enough to figure out the answer before people find out you did not know, and bold enough to seize life-defining opportunities when they come, even when you feel completely out of your depth.
Three. Older generations do not always see things the way you do but only very foolish people think older generations have nothing to teach them. If you can find a way to bridge that gap, it will serve you for your entire career. Your career will be shaped 40% by the quality of your work and 60% by the network you build and the perceptions people hold of you. Invest in that network as seriously as you invest in working hard.
Class of 2026.
When I received the email asking me to be this year’s commencement speaker, I stared at my screen for nearly five minutes. Because I know what this stage means. I walked across it over a decade ago, and it changed the trajectory of my life.
Today it is your turn.
Ghana is watching. Africa is watching. And I believe — with every fibre of my being — that the answer to this country’s most urgent questions is sitting in these seats.
The entire nation awaits your manifestation.
Congratulations, Class of 2026.
