The Scholarship, Leadership & Citizenship Award is given on an annual basis to three graduates who have lived out Ashesi’s core values during their time at the university. The award is presented by the President of the University, and students who receive the award are those who have contributed in outstanding ways to Ashesi’s mission, and have had a strong impact on the Ashesi Community. This is the highest award a student can receive at Ashesi. The following are citations read for the three recipients at Ashesi’s 2019 Commencement Ceremony.

Gumiso Persistance Chisi
Our first awardee is not just graduating top 5% of her class; in fact, when you ask around campus about this person, you will hear words like Leader and humble, highly driven, and humble, diligent, and humble, achiever and humble… She/he had a record of service on campus bar none: Ashesi’s library, Admissions, Career services, Foundation of Design and Entrepreneurship class, Coaching Counseling and Academic advising and at each of these places she left her mark of excellence.

She/he was also very involved in student government and served in multiple leadership roles, very athletic and was nominated as the athlete of the year during her time at Ashesi. She led and served beyond the Ashesi campus. In Berekuso, she was involved with developing the Design Thinking method of problem-solving class to junior high schoolers. Beyond Berekuso, she researched and analyzed the legal and regulatory regime in Ghana and how STEM education can be effectively delivered in schools across the country. As a passionate advocate for women’s issues, she worked to highlight the many high impact women around the world in 2017 and spent three months later that year in deep policy lobbying and advocacy working with a major women’s rights organization in Ghana. Beyond Ghana, she worked with a national center that provided psychosocial support for children and youth from difficult circumstances.

In 2020, just before she embarked on her master’s in International Public Management at Science Po, Paris, she worked with the Moremi Initiative Leadership Empowerment and Development (MILEAD) program to deliver leadership lessons to their 2020 cohort of fellows. She goes by all these names: Madam President, A peer Mentor, Madam Chairperson, Ashesi Ambassador.

For so strongly representing the Ashesi ideals of Scholarship, Leadership and Citizenship, we present this award to Gumiso Persistance Chisi.

Zoe Tagboto
Our next awardee is a very energetic member of the Ashesi community who had an incredible growth mindset and always sought developing opportunities through both her experiences and from her work with others. She pursued competence in multiple programming languages beyond academic requirements, as she wanted to develop a capacity to address a hearing impairment of a loved one. She hence embarked on various projects in this space such as: An application to enhance hearing for individuals who are hard of hearing using Digital Signal Processing in TasosDSP and Kotlin; Used Flutter to develop the first mobile application to teach Ghanaian Sign Language to prevent isolation between the deaf and hearing populations in Ghana; Developed an application using OpenCV to translate basic American Sign Language into text to improve communication between the hearing and deaf community…and on and on.

It is no wonder that she interned for companies both in Ghana and Canada and got into programs like the Google Women Techmakers Scholars Program and the Norman Foster Foundation Robotics Atelier Scholar program. When the first Ashesi Women’s Leadership program was held in 2019, her peers chose her as a model leader to serve on a panel to share her experiences with selected students across the country.

She served as Secretary of the Ashesi Student Council, a facilitator during the inaugural year of the Ashesi Success course, a founding member of the Ashesi sign language organization, and a fellow of the prestigious Melton Foundation Fellowship. She combined a sterling academic record with leading purposefully and graciously.

For so strongly representing the Ashesi ideals of Scholarship, Leadership and Citizenship, we present this award to Zoe Tagboto.

Major Kadonzvo
Our final awardee never ceased to excel beyond all expectations both academically and socially during his time at Ashesi. An outstanding academic performer who maintained an almost perfect GPA in Ashesi’s rigorous and demanding engineering program. His calm demeanor shined through in every situation. He rarely panics and showed an unwavering desire to learn and explore new horizons.

He was very involved in many community initiatives and demonstrated a strong desire to create tangible and impactful social change in his surroundings. He was one of the early and most active volunteers for Bowney Initiative which aimed to empower young women in Berekuso. He and others on the Bowney Team established the Berekuso community library to promote reading in the community, especially among girls. He tutored fellow students in Mathematics and Engineering courses. And was involved in mentoring freshmen in the Buddy up program as they try to find their way in a community which is distinctly different from what they were used to in their high schools.

He did not only explore and adapt in our incredibly diverse campus, he embraced it. He eagerly took up learning languages of other African countries represented on campus. He took part in experimental farm project that explored hydroponics for farming and its possible introduction in our host communities. He joined friends in travelling to volunteer to teach in other parts of Ghana and he happily savored every meal in a conscious effort to fully understand other people and places. These traits of global citizenship paved his way into the Melton Fellowship, a global network of problem-solvers working together to transform the world.

In 2018, this awardee was one of a very selected few students who spent the summer in the US to be part of highly sought-after program: The Applied Methods and Research Experience (AMRE). This is an exchange program where Ashesi and College of Wooster students get the opportunity to apply classroom learning in the role of business and as organizational consultants and where student participants are exposed to practical applications of their liberal arts education in a “real world” setting.

In all aspect of his life, it was unmistakable his thoughtfulness, drive, and eagerness to share the best of himself with others. When Ashesi launched its partnership with the Arizona State University in the special 3+1+1 program, he was one of our first cohort of students in this accelerated master’s program for high performing students; and he represented Ashesi in Arizona with excellence in every aspect.

For being so deeply involved in many things, for striving for excellence in all, and for doing this with such a gentle heart and an open mind, and for so strongly representing the Ashesi ideals of Scholarship, Leadership and Citizenship, we present this award to Major Kadonzvo.