Inclusive or Exclusive? Rethinking Digital Accessibility in Ghana’s Universities 

The Authors Nicholas Arthur-Baidoo Jnr, Elsie Edinam Avevor, and Francis Kwesku Essel are members of the Ashesi Accessibility Team. The team advances disability inclusion by providing disability inclusion training and sign language services across the university.

 

In Ghana’s Gen Z era, education happens as much online as it does in the classroom. Lecture notes are shared on WhatsApp, assignments are submitted through learning management systems, and university portals determine everything from course registration to graduation. Ghana’s universities have embraced digital transformation as a symbol of progress. Yet one critical question remains largely unanswered: Who is disconnected by design? 

For many students with disabilities, digital transformation has created new barriers rather than new opportunities. The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic accelerated the adoption of online learning across public and private universities, prompting institutions to move lectures, assessments, and administrative services online almost overnight. While this shift ensured continuity in learning, accessibility was often overlooked. Even after campuses reopened, many of these digital practices became permanent despite remaining inaccessible to students with disabilities. 

Although more than 500,000 Ghanaians live with disabilities, digital accessibility remains a significant gap within higher education. Research by Agangiba (2020) and Mensah (2020) suggests that only a small proportion of university websites and portals meet basic accessibility standards. As universities continue to invest in digital learning, they must ensure these platforms expand access rather than reinforce exclusion.


Where Digital Exclusion Begins 

Inaccessible Admission Systems
Exclusion often starts before a student even sets foot in a classroom. Many online admission portals use complex CAPTCHA or timed forms that do not work with assistive technology. Standard CAPTCHA asks users to identify distorted letters or click on all images containing “traffic lights.” For students who are blind or have low vision, these are impossible to solve without a high-quality audio alternative. If a brilliant student with a disability cannot even apply for a program because the portal is inaccessible, the university has failed its mission of inclusion before the semester begins. 

Learning Management Systems That Leave Students Behind
Learning management systems (LMSs) such as Canvas, Moodle, Sakai, and institution-specific platforms have become central to teaching and learning. However, many LMSs were implemented without adequate accessibility testing. When buttons are not properly labeled, and navigation is not compatible with screen readers, students with visual impairments encounter unnecessary obstacles in completing basic academic tasks such as submitting assignments, taking quizzes, or accessing course materials. 

Inaccessible Course Materials
Perhaps the most common accessibility barrier is the use of scanned PDF documents. When lecturers upload scanned textbook chapters as images rather than searchable text, students using screen readers cannot access the content. Without Optical Character Recognition (OCR), these documents become unreadable. 

Images, charts, graphs, and diagrams present similar challenges. Without meaningful alternative text (alt text), students using assistive technologies miss essential information that their peers receive immediately. 

Limited Access for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students
Digital accessibility extends beyond visual impairments. Students who are deaf or hard of hearing frequently encounter online lectures and virtual events without sign language interpretation, captions, or transcripts. 

Even when interpreters are provided during live sessions, they are often not spotlighted on screen, making interpretation difficult to follow. As a result, many students rely on classmates to explain lecture content after class, requiring additional time and effort to access information that others receive in real time. 

Videos Without Captions
Recorded lectures have become valuable learning resources, yet many remain inaccessible. Videos without captions or transcripts exclude students who are deaf or hard of hearing and present additional challenges for students who process information differently, speak English as an additional language, or struggle with unfamiliar accents. 

Captions and transcripts do more than support accessibility. They improve comprehension, make content searchable, and enhance learning for all students.

 

The Human Cost of Digital Inaccessibility 

Digital exclusion has consequences that extend far beyond technology. Students who must spend hours converting inaccessible documents into readable formats often experience chronic stress, frustration, and exhaustion before they even begin studying. 

Over time, these barriers contribute to anxiety, burnout, and feelings of imposter syndrome, causing students to question whether they belong in higher education despite having the ability to succeed. 

Digital exclusion also limits participation in university life. Student organizations, leadership opportunities, extracurricular activities, and campus events are increasingly organized online. When registration forms, promotional materials, or virtual meetings are inaccessible, students with disabilities are unintentionally excluded from experiences that contribute to personal growth, leadership development, and professional networking. 

Academically, inaccessible systems create unnecessary delays. While one student can immediately access assigned readings, another may spend days waiting for an accessible version of the same material. In a fast-paced semester, these delays accumulate quickly, affecting coursework, grades, and graduation timelines. 

Perhaps most significantly, inaccessible technology undermines independence. Rather than navigating university systems on their own, students are forced to rely on friends or classmates to complete tasks such as reading documents, filling out forms, or explaining recorded lectures. This dependence diminishes confidence and undermines one of higher education’s core objectives: preparing students for independent professional and personal lives.

Before You, A Thousand Hands: How Supply Chains Shape the World We Live In

Dr. Disraeli Asante-Darko is Head of the Business Administration Department and Director of the Ashesi MBA at Ashesi University. A business strategist, consultant, and Associate Professor, he brings over a decade of experience bridging industry and academia. His expertise spans operations management, supply chain optimization, and data analytics, and he has led high-impact projects across multiple sectors.

 

Think about your morning. You woke up, reached for your phone, assembled from minerals mined in Congo, components manufactured in Taiwan, software written in California, packaged in China, and shipped through Rotterdam. You made coffee, beans grown in Ethiopia or Colombia, roasted in Germany or the Netherlands, sold under a brand that has never once visited the farm. You put on clothes whose cotton was grown in India, spun in Bangladesh, sewn in Vietnam, and branded in France. And you probably did all of this without thinking about any of it.

That effortlessness is the greatest engineering achievement of the modern world. And it is also, quietly, one of its greatest moral failures.

Supply chains are the invisible operating system of human civilization. They determine what gets made, where, by whom, at what cost, and who captures the reward. They decide which countries industrialize and which remain suppliers of raw materials. They set the terms on which a Ghanaian farmer, a Bangladeshi garment worker, or a Congolese miner participates in the global economy. And for most of history, and still today, in most conversations, they have been almost entirely invisible to the people whose lives they shape most deeply.

Supply chains don’t just move goods. They move wealth, risk, carbon, and consequence—and they move them in directions most people never see.

For a brief, disorienting moment in 2021, the world looked directly at supply chains and did not look away. A single container ship, the Ever Given, ran aground in the Suez Canal and blocked twelve percent of global trade for six days. Factory floors went idle. Supermarket shelves emptied. Semiconductor shortages halted car production on three continents. The price of shipping a standard container from Shanghai to Europe, which had hovered around $1,500 before the pandemic, shot past $14,000.

Suddenly, everyone understood, viscerally, something that supply chain professionals had been saying for decades: the global economy does not run on money or technology alone. It runs on the movement of physical things, and that movement is far more fragile, far more concentrated, and far more consequential than anyone had been paying attention to.

Then the crisis passed. The ships moved. The shelves refilled. And the world stopped paying attention again.

That return to invisibility is not a relief. It is the problem.

I have spent the better part of my career sitting at the intersection of operations research and supply chain management, and what never stops striking me is the gap between how technically sophisticated these systems have become and how poorly understood they remain outside the boardroom and the classroom. I remember a session with a group of senior executives—experienced, intelligent people—who were genuinely surprised to learn that the product their company sold had passed through eleven countries before it reached a customer. Not eleven suppliers. Eleven countries. They had never thought to ask. That gap between the complexity of the system and the attention it receives—is where most of the damage happens.

Here is what the textbooks do not always say clearly enough: a supply chain is not a neutral logistics diagram. It is a set of choices about where to source, where to process, who to pay and how much, how to account for risk, and who absorbs the cost of disruption. Those choices compound over time into structures that look inevitable but are, in fact, deeply political. They determine who prospers and who remains at the bottom of the value ladder, season after season, decade after decade.

Supporting Farmers to Build Sustainable Businesses Through Financial Literacy

When Racheal Addin received a call inviting her to a bookkeeping and financial literacy training, she did not hesitate. “I was very happy when I heard about the training,” she recalls. ” I had to be there, learn, and use what I’d gain for my future.”

Like many smallholder farmers in Pokrom, Ghana’s Eastern Region, Addin worked hard to grow her business. But like many entrepreneurs, she faced a challenge that had nothing to do with farming itself. She struggled to keep track of her money. Income from the farm often blended with household expenses, making it difficult to know whether her business was truly growing. She was not alone.

Most of the 20 participants who gathered at the Hephzibah Christian Center for Ashesi Nkabom Collaborative‘s three-day Bookkeeping and Financial Literacy Training had never received formal financial management training. Some relied entirely on memory to keep track of sales and expenses. Others admitted that families frequently consumed business income before they had a chance to reinvest it. Several had experienced mobile money fraud or lacked confidence using digital financial tools.

 

For many, farming had always been viewed as a way to make ends meet rather than as a business that required planning, budgeting, and investment. Through  demonstrations, role plays, storytelling, and discussions conducted primarily in Twi, participants learned how to separate business income from household finances. They learned to record daily transactions using simple pictorial tools, plan for seasonal income fluctuations, and build consistent saving habits. The program was designed to be accessible for participants with limited literacy and two participants living with disabilities.

One key lesson for Richard Nortey was discovering that financial discipline is not determined by how much money someone earns. The lesson reflected one of the program’s core messages: sustainable businesses are built not only on increasing income, but on developing habits that protect and grow it.

Making the AfCFTA Africa’s Daily Bread: A Recipe for a Successful Africa

Kweku Attakora Dwomoh is a lecturer with the Ashesi Law Department. He is an international commercial, trade, and investment expert, author, researcher, and consultant with experience in dispute settlement, business regulation, and international trade law. He has served as an expert consultant to the African Continental Free Trade Area Secretariat and co-authored a first-of-its-kind book on the sale of goods in Africa, published by LexisNexis.

Africa is at an important moment of opportunity, with growing momentum toward more inclusive and sustainable growth. Although about 464 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa were estimated to be living in extreme poverty in 2024, the continent is also building strong foundations for change. A key part of this is the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), a major initiative that helps Africa use its large market, strengthen trade between countries, and promote shared economic growth.

The African Advantage
Africa has a distinctive advantage in the global economy, albeit underestimated. The spotlight on Africa has conveniently been on its challenges and woes. Yet the African continent holds significant advantages in its vegetation, weather, people, resources, demographics, untapped markets, cultural diversity, flexibility, and labor force.
The continent has the youngest population in the world, with over 60% of Africans under 25. This youthful population represents energy, creativity, and adaptability. Africa also has a strategic economic advantage due to its market potential. With a population exceeding 1.3 billion, Africa represents one of the largest emerging consumer and production markets in the world.

The African Continental Free Trade Area strengthens this advantage by creating a single continental market that reduces fragmentation and encourages intra-African trade. This integration offers African businesses the scale needed to grow, industrialize, and compete globally.

Indeed, the AfCFTA is at a defining moment in Africa’s economic history. It represents the most ambitious effort by African states to create a unified market of 1.3 billion people with a combined GDP of over US$3.4 trillion. Yet its success will not be measured by treaties signed in conference halls but by how many Africans experience its benefits in everyday economic life. For the AfCFTA to truly transform the continent, it must become integral to the daily activities of traders, manufacturers, investors, and consumers — in effect, Africa’s daily bread.

 

Legal Frameworks as the Foundation for Confidence in AfCFTA
Legal certainty drives investor confidence. Worldwide, countries with transparent, enforceable trade rules attract greater foreign direct investment; for example, countries ranked highest in the World Bank’s Doing Business indicators consistently record stronger inflows of capital.

One of the long-standing concerns for investors in Africa has been regulatory fragmentation, inconsistent application of laws across borders, and weak dispute resolution mechanisms. The AfCFTA directly addresses these concerns by creating a continent-wide, rules-based trade regime that reduces uncertainty and harmonizes key aspects of market access, customs procedures, and regulatory cooperation.

Under the AfCFTA, a uniform set of clear commitments on tariff liberalization and trade facilitation reduces the cost and risk of cross-border investment. Investors are more willing to commit capital when they can plan supply chains across multiple African countries under a single legal framework rather than a space with conflicting national systems.

The AfCFTA, through its Protocol on Dispute Settlement, establishes a well-defined dispute resolution mechanism and body, giving investors the assurance of resolving trade disputes fairly.

In practical terms, when AfCFTA legal frameworks are embedded in domestic law and enforced by strong institutions, they reassure investors that their rights will be recognized, that disputes can be resolved fairly, and that market access commitments will be honored. This creates investor confidence, drawing the continent closer to realizing the African Advantage.

What Africans Must Know

For the AfCFTA to succeed, Africans must move beyond seeing it as an abstract project and begin to understand it as a practical tool that shapes everyday economic life.

First, Africans must understand that the AfCFTA is not the political vision of any leader. It is neither rhetoric. It is a trade rules-based legal framework. Thus, buyers and sellers, manufacturers, and service providers need basic awareness of tariff reductions, rules of origin, customs procedures, and dispute settlement mechanisms. They need this knowledge to know what preferences they can claim and what cost advantages they can access to gain a competitive edge.

Second, Africans must recognize the importance of value addition and regional value chains. The AfCFTA is designed to encourage production within Africa rather than the export of raw materials. Businesses must understand how sourcing inputs across borders, meeting rules of origin requirements, and complying with standards can unlock new markets. This mindset shift is critical for industrial growth and job creation.

Third, policymakers and institutions must appreciate that implementation matters more than merely having an agreement. Without the implementation of the trade advantages and rules the AfCFTA brings, the agreement will lose its relevance and remain only an aspirational concept.

Finally, Africans must see the AfCFTA as a collective responsibility. Its success depends on participation by businesses, civil society, academia, and ordinary citizens. When Africans understand their rights, obligations, and opportunities under the AfCFTA, they become active contributors rather than passive observers.

In essence, the AfCFTA will succeed when Africans know how to use it, trust its rules, take ownership of its promise, and make it their daily bread.

Students reframe Ghana’s food challenges at Nkabom Networking Day

Guy-Marie Kassapu Tenejou has watched the same pattern repeat for years. As the lead of Balacemart, a farm produce distribution venture, he and his team move between periods of oversupply and undersupply. They have studied the problem before. What emerged after a day at Ashesi University on May 19, 2026, was a way to trace the pattern to its source.
 

“I’m leaving Ashesi with the iceberg model and the ability to analyze problems more holistically,” Tenejou said. “I think this model will help us better understand the root causes and develop more effective solutions.”
 

Tenejou was one of over 100 participants at the Agrifood Student Networking Day, hosted at Ashesi for member institutions and industry partners of the Nkabom Collaborative. The Collaborative is a community of practice addressing youth unemployment in Ghana’s nutrition and agri-food sectors through experiential learning, inclusive community-based research, and youth-led entrepreneurship. It brings together nine leading Ghanaian and Canadian institutions. The networking day combined a student panel, an innovation showcase, and a hands-on systems-thinking session focused on Ghana’s food system.

Blockchain Technology Adoption in Ghanaian Banks: Existing Perceptions, Regulatory Concerns, and Potential for Green FinTech 

Adwoa Afi Asante reflects on her senior year research exploring perceptions of blockchain technology in Ghana’s banking sector. She examined regulatory concerns, institutional readiness, and the untapped potential of Green FinTech to shape more transparent and sustainable financial systems.

My journey into finance began through internships at two banks in Ghana. I spent significant time onboarding customers onto digital banking platforms. These experiences exposed me to the Ghanaian banking system’s growing push toward digital finance. At the same time, the increasing conversations around sustainability and green finance pushed my interest in exploring the intersection of finance, technology, and regulation through my research.

Having just returned from a semester in France, where I studied decentralized finance in greater depth, I had also become increasingly curious about financial regulation and green finance.

Then I discovered Green FinTech, a term researchers defined as the synergy between financial technology and green finance, designed to promote environmental sustainability through innovative financial solutions. FinTech tools such as blockchain could advance environmental initiatives and offer significant benefits to Ghana’s banking sector. Blockchain could help prevent greenwashing, enhance transparency, improve cross-border payments, enable smart contract creation, and more. So why was it not being discussed or implemented as much as one might expect?

The literature pointed to regulatory gaps, institutional capacity constraints, and policy misalignments. Those reasons are all valid, but I had different questions in mind: What do the people behind these organizations and banks actually think about blockchain? What personal perceptions do they hold? How do these perceptions shape organizational readiness? And what regulatory concerns matter most to them?

To answer these questions, I held extensive conversations with senior banking professionals from universal banks and the Bank of Ghana. They were department heads or managers with significant experience in Ghana’s banking sector, although their knowledge and experience with blockchain technology varied. Here is what I found when I pulled back the curtain on the human side of Ghana’s blockchain future.

What do banking professionals really think about blockchain?
Most of the professionals I spoke with do see value in blockchain. They identified clear operational benefits and discussed how blockchain could streamline settlements, automate Know-Your-Customer processes through smart contracts, reduce fraud, and make cross-border payments faster and more transparent.

Yet for every perceived benefit, there was also a perceived risk. The same professionals described blockchain as high-risk, expensive to implement, and potentially vulnerable to cybersecurity threats. There was near-unanimous agreement that blockchain is complex in many ways. It was perceived as difficult to understand, implement, and explain to customers.

Interestingly, some participants noted that while the technical side is complex, customers may not need to fully understand the technology. They may only need to experience the benefits. However, that did not reduce the perceived internal difficulty. As a result, most participants acknowledged that their institutions would likely need to rely on external expertise.

Contrary to expectations, compatibility emerged as a two-way issue. Participants believed the infrastructure itself could be implemented and integrated into existing banking systems. Culturally, however, blockchain may be a misfit. The professionals described banks in Ghana as followers rather than pioneers. They perceived professionals, institutions, and customers alike as conservative and more willing to adopt a tool only after another institution has “de-risked” it first.

Participants also stated that, in principle, piloting a blockchain application is possible. In practice, however, management approval, budget allocation, and regulatory clarity remain significant barriers, making trialability low. Observability is equally weak, as most participants could not point to visible or concrete examples of blockchain adoption in Ghana. Benefits were often discussed in abstract terms rather than through demonstrated outcomes, leaving many to view blockchain adoption as largely theoretical.

And when it comes to Green FinTech, that connection simply is not there yet.

Most participants did not naturally associate blockchain with environmental sustainability. A few generalized that blockchain is digital and therefore reduces paper use or material waste. Others were more concerned about blockchain’s high energy consumption than its potential to verify green bonds or prevent greenwashing.

It is also worth noting that some participants expressed the view that environmental sustainability conversations are still relatively new within Ghanaian banking. According to them, the Bank of Ghana is only beginning to promote these conversations, meaning there is still significant room for growth.

While the conceptual possibility exists, awareness remains underdeveloped, and blockchain’s green potential is largely absent from the minds of professionals and regulators.

Are our banks ready? 

According to my study, not quite.

First, top management support is lukewarm at best. Senior leaders understand what blockchain is and recognize its potential, but they are not yet ready to fully commit. Many remain cautious because of cybersecurity concerns and the high costs associated with implementation. In other words, management appears interested, but interest is not the same as commitment.

Second, human resources remain a major constraint. Blockchain requires technical skills and expertise that most participants believe Ghanaian banks currently lack in-house. As a result, banks, including the Bank of Ghana, are creating or have already created separate departments focused on FinTech research, development, and implementation.

What are professionals actually worried about? 

One might assume that regulatory ambiguity is the primary concern, but participants generally acknowledged that the approaches being taken by the Bank of Ghana and the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Virtual Asset Service Provider Act 2025, are forward-looking and appropriate.

What professionals are more concerned about is the pace of innovation relative to regulation. They believe innovation moves faster than regulation can keep up. By the time regulators adapt to one technological development, the technology itself has already evolved further.

As a result, many participants believe that until there is stronger confidence in the regulatory environment, banks will most likely remain on the sidelines.

Why does this matter? 

Most conversations about blockchain focus on the technology itself. Can it work? Is it secure? Those are important questions, but they often overlook the human side of adoption.

The professionals I spoke with are neither ignorant nor resistant. Instead, they highlighted the very real human and institutional barriers that shape adoption. Perceptions, fear, culture, and capacity all matter. They see the potential, but they are cautious because of risk, cost, organizational culture, and regulation, and that caution is entirely rational.

Ghana has an opportunity. The interest is there. But moving forward will require work, courage, and a willingness to listen to the people making these decisions every day.

For regulators, this means continuing to build flexible frameworks, regulatory sandboxes, and pilot programs. For banks, it means investing in internal capacity and pushing for the regulatory clarity they need.

Paying attention to perceptions helps us understand why adoption does or does not happen. And that is exactly what I set out to do.

Thierry Tchio ’25 Is Building nBogne for the Realities of African Health Systems

In 2024, Thierry Tchio ’25 found himself carrying sensitive lab results between a primary care center and an advanced diagnostic center in Accra because the two facilities’ electronic systems could not communicate with each other.

That experience exposed a larger problem than inconvenience: in many African contexts, digital health systems exist, but they do not reliably support continuity of care. This became the starting point for nBogne (pronounced “bo-gey”), a health-tech venture Tchio is now building with an early focus in his native Cameroon.

nBogne is designed as a cellular-first data transmission layer that helps health information move between facilities even where reliable broadband is unavailable. The system uses USSD and SMS to transmit medical records through existing cellular networks, allowing data to move when internet-based systems are unavailable, incompatible, or offline.

“I found that we needed homegrown solutions that would work on the infrastructure available,” he said.

The reality is that fewer than 35% of Sub-Saharan Africa’s nearly 100,000 health facilities have reliable broadband. That is not background context. It is a design constraint. The solution began as a response to one frustrating experience. Since then, it has grown into an effort to solve the broader systems challenge of making health information move more reliably across fragmented care environments.

Now part of the second cohort of the health track in the Ashesi Venture Incubator (AVI), Tchio is building nBogne while working full-time as an IT Consultant at a Big Four accounting firm in Accra and coordinating a distributed team of software engineers across borders. His co-founder, Alma, is based in the United States and brings experience working on digital health systems in Cameroon, where the venture is concentrating its early work.

“It’s not easy launching from afar,” Tchio said.

That distance shapes the venture in practical ways. Neither founder is currently based in Cameroon, making it harder to observe product use directly during testing. A small network of collaborators supports the early pilot phase, helping the team understand how the system fits into existing workflows. For now, those pilots remain limited in scale and are intended to inform development rather than full deployment.

The venture is also contending with the pressures that often shape early-stage health innovation. Two earlier co-founders stepped away as the demands of the work became clearer. Licensing remains unresolved. Certification and integration into government systems still lie ahead. Tchio estimates that building a scalable, production-ready prototype and carrying out an initial deployment could require as much as $50,000. And yet, momentum is building.

nBogne is currently in a test pilot phase with a small number of hospitals and health centers, while the team engages prospective institutional users, including research institutions, private hospitals, and electronic medical record providers. The founders are also fundraising, fully aware that health ventures in Africa often move at the pace of infrastructure, regulation, and trust.

Tchio sees this as simply part of the work. Progress depends on product design and navigating infrastructure on one hand, and regulation and adoption on the other.

“If we need to pivot, we will,” he said. “We’ve already done that more than 10 times in the health space over the last two years.”

Being part of AVI has helped him sharpen both the product and the assumptions behind it. Working with coaches has pushed him to think more rigorously about what the venture is solving and what it will take to make it viable. He also credits Ashesi with shaping the mindset he now brings to entrepreneurship.

What Tchio is building is not a solution for ideal conditions. It is an attempt to make compatibility more possible in the systems that already exist. If nBogne succeeds, it could reduce the burden on patients and help providers exchange information in ways that better support continuity of care across fragmented health systems.

For now, the work remains early, but Tchio is building with a clear conviction: that solutions grounded in local realities stand a better chance of working than those designed for conditions that do not exist.

World Health Organization African Region and Ashesi University Launch Cohort 7 of Health Leadership Program

The World Health Organization African Region (WHO AFRO), in partnership with Ashesi University, has launched the seventh cohort of the Pathways to Leadership for Health Transformation in Africa (PLHTA) Program. Since its inception, the program has brought together senior health officials from Ghana and across Africa. The initiative equips participants not only with management skills but also with self-awareness and the capacity to drive meaningful institutional change.

The program helps participants develop a deeper understanding of themselves as leaders, including their strengths, blind spots, and ability to lead lasting change within their institutions.

Cohort Seven welcomed forty heads of health institutions from public service organisations, regulatory bodies, teaching hospitals, and faith-based health entities operating under the mandate of the Ministry of Health.

Before the in-person sessions, participants complete a StrengthsFinder Assessment, a Learning Needs Assessment, and a virtual orientation. They then convene for a five-day intensive workshop. During the program, participants explore interconnected areas including self-leadership, team leadership, systems thinking, emotional intelligence, appreciative leadership, and ethical practice. Each stage of the experience is designed to help participants develop a personal Leadership Transformation Plan.

Cohort Seven also introduces two major initiatives: an externally led Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) phase and the PLHTA Alumni Network. The M&E phase will assess the program’s impact across all six previous cohorts by documenting shifts in leadership competency, institutional outcomes, and participant experiences. The process will also produce a reusable evaluation framework for future leadership programs.

The PLHTA Alumni Network, launched on March 30, 2026, at Ashesi University, brought together past participants alongside senior representatives from the WHO AFRO, the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), and Ghana’s Ministry of Health for a day of keynote addresses, storytelling, and community building. The network reflects a growing recognition that the work of transforming health systems does not end when a cohort graduates. It continues in every meeting room, policy decision, and team that a PLHTA leader goes on to shape.

Remarks by Patrick Awuah at Ashesi’s Rwanda Genocide Memorial Unveiling

Thank you very much, Honorable Minister of Education, Your Excellency, Major General. It’s such an honor for us to host this occasion here at Ashesi University.
During our 30th anniversary celebration at Ashesi, I shared publicly for the first time that a major reason I decided to leave Microsoft and return to Africa was that the Rwandan genocide happened while I was at the company.
As an African who had immigrated to the United States and was working in the tech industry, I had fully intended to stay. Then this horror unfolded in Rwanda. The vice president of the unit I worked in, Mike Murray, started a fundraising campaign to support the people of Rwanda, and I contributed. Until then, I had only made donations to my alma mater, Swarthmore College. That moment left a deep impression on me.
Shortly after, my son was born. I found myself raising an African child in Seattle and reflecting on how events in Africa affect people of African descent everywhere. Even if I stayed in the United States, the negative stories coming out of Africa—from Rwanda, Somalia, Sierra Leone, and Liberia—shaped how all people of African descent were perceived. It became clear to me that we needed to change that narrative, and that those of us who had opportunities had a responsibility to be part of that change.
So, I eventually left Microsoft and returned to establish Ashesi University—a leadership institution for the continent.
Through my work with Ashesi, I later visited Rwanda for the first time, attending conferences and meetings. I remember visiting the museum dedicated to the campaign against the genocide. As I walked through it, I came across an exhibit about General Anyidoho and his contingent, and what they had done. Until that moment, I did not know that story.
We all knew about President Kagame and his troops, who brought the atrocity to an end and went on to lead efforts in truth and reconciliation and in rebuilding a nation in remarkable ways. But I had not known that a Ghanaian soldier and his troops had played such a critical role.
I left that exhibit thinking: we do not tell our stories of heroism enough. We do not tell the stories of courage, of forgiveness, of peacebuilding.
For me, having this monument and commemoration here is a profound honor. It represents the very beginning—the moment that awakened me to the work I am doing today.
To have a monument that celebrates the best of leadership, courage, forgiveness, reconciliation, and the protection of human rights—I cannot think of a more fitting first memorial for this campus.
I would like to thank you, Madam High Commissioner, for your partnership. And I want to assure you that Rwanda will always have a home in our hearts and on our campus.
We are proud to have many Rwandan students here. They enrich the Ashesi community in meaningful ways. Today, we also have students pursuing their master’s degrees at Carnegie Mellon University Africa in Kigali.
It is inspiring to see this bond continue to grow. We are also actively engaging with the African School of Governance to explore opportunities for collaboration across multiple areas.
Because having these bright, shining examples for our continent matters.
On that note, I would like to thank you all for being here. Thank you, General Anyidoho, for your service. And thank you, Honorable Minister and Your Excellency, for joining us.
Welcome.

Ashesi Unveils Rwandan Genocide Memorial Honoring Victims and Ghanaian Peacekeepers

On Friday, April 10, Ashesi University unveiled a monument on campus in memory of the victims of the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda and in honor of the Ghanaian peacekeepers who stayed to save lives during the genocide. The memorial is the first on an African university campus outside Rwanda, and the first monument dedicated to the Ghanaian soldiers who remained in Kigali when much of the world withdrew.

The unveiling ceremony was part of this year’s Kwibuka, which is the annual commemoration of the genocide. It brought together members of the Rwandan community in Ghana, military officers from the Ghana Armed Forces Corps of Signals, and family and friends of Major General Henry Kwami Anyidoho (RTD), Deputy Force Commander of the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) who led the Ghanaian peacekeeping contingent in 1994.

University President Patrick Awuah noted that the genocide had a profound influence on his decision to return to Africa. Witnessing the tragedy and seeing efforts by colleagues to rally support for victims, while living in the US, made him realize the need for Africans to play an active role in changing negative narratives about the continent. He further encouraged Ghanaians to do more to tell their own stories, particularly those that highlight courageous leadership.

A Moment of Complete Surprise
Speaking at the event, Major General Anyidoho offered a firsthand account of the decision to retain a Ghanaian residual force in Rwanda as the UN considered withdrawing its mission entirely. Drawing from his book Guns Over Kigali, he described the streets of Kigali at the height of the genocide, and the conviction that drove him to seek approval from the Government of Ghana to stay.

“The militia went on the rampage and massacred in the hundreds and killed in the thousands,” he told the gathering, quoting from his memoir Guns Over Kigali. “That was the period that the Rwandese needed us most. With the help of God, we saved as many lives as possible and created humanitarian corridors.“

Remarks by Rwandan Minister of Education Hon. Joseph Nsengimana, at Ashesi’s Rwanda Genocide Memorial Unveiling

High Commissioner Rosemary Mbabazi,

President of Ashesi University Dr. Patrick Awuah, and the entire leadership and faculty of the University,

Major General Henry Kwami Anyidoho RTD, and former members of the Ghanaian Contingent who were in Rwanda during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, who made it here today, your families and friends,

Fellow Rwandans,

Rwandan students at Ashesi and the student community,

Distinguished Guests,

All protocol observed.

Good afternoon.

I bring warm greetings from His Excellency, President Paul Kagame, the Government and People of Rwanda.

I am delighted to join you here today for this historical moment of the unveiling of the Monument in tribute to the over one million innocent lives killed during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, and also recognizing the brave Ghanaian contingent that risked their lives and protected many, ultimately standing on the right side of history.

In international law, genocide is among the gravest of crimes. It is defined not only by acts of violence, but by intent. It is the deliberate, systematic attempt to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.

32 years ago, the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda took place. This was a carefully orchestrated plan of destruction which unfolded over several decades. This was not a spontaneous eruption of violence. It was the culmination of decades of division, discrimination, and dehumanization. Long before 1994, Tutsis were subjected to repeated pogroms, exclusion, and persecution. Many were forced into exile. An apartheid-like system took root, codifying ethnicity and normalizing hatred.

Then, in April 1994, the machinery of extermination was activated. Roadblocks appeared overnight. Militias, armed mostly with machetes and crude weapons, moved with chilling efficiency. Lists of names had been prepared in advance. Neighbors turned against neighbors. Families were hunted. Children were not spared. In just 100 days more than one million people were killed in the fastest genocide in recorded history. This represented one in every seven Rwandans. Let us pause on that reality: an entire nation shattered in a matter of weeks. Lives erased, communities destroyed, humanity tested at its very core.

And yet, even as the killings unfolded in plain sight, they were denied. They were minimized. They were mischaracterized as chaos, as conflict, as anything but what they were: a genocide. The international community, despite warnings and clear evidence, failed to act. It failed to name the crime. It failed to stop it. History will forever bear witness to that failure.

Dear Guests,

After the genocide was stopped in July 1994 by the Rwandan Patriotic Front, Rwanda stood at the edge of an abyss. Our country was devastated. Our people were traumatized. Institutions had collapsed. Trust had been destroyed. At that defining moment, Rwanda faced a fundamental choice: to pursue revenge, or to choose a different path. Our leaders, guided by the resilience of our people and the lessons of our history, chose unity, reconciliation, and nation-building.

On July 19th, 1994, the Government of National Unity was established, bringing together a coalition of political forces under a shared vision: to rebuild Rwanda as one nation. The challenges were immense. How do you restore trust among people who have experienced such profound violence? How do you deliver justice while fostering reconciliation? How do you rebuild a country made up of the wounded, the bereaved, and the displaced?

The answer lay in strong political will, inclusive governance, and homegrown solutions rooted in our culture. From the very beginning, steps were taken to restore unity. Ethnic identity cards were abolished. The narrative of division was rejected. Rwandans were encouraged to see themselves not as separate groups, but as one people.

In an extraordinary act of rebuilding, former soldiers of the previous national army were integrated into the new national army, alongside the forces that had stopped the genocide. This was not just a security measure. It was a powerful statement of reconciliation and shared future.

Millions of refugees returned home. Internally displaced persons were resettled. Security was restored, despite continued threats from genocidal forces operating beyond our borders. At the same time, the Government initiated nationwide consultations, at the grassroots and national levels, bringing citizens together to reflect on the past and to define a collective vision for the future. This process led to the establishment of the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission in 1999, tasked with fostering dialogue, healing, and social cohesion.

Justice, too, had to be reimagined. Conventional systems alone could not handle the scale of crimes committed. In response, Rwanda revived a traditional mechanism: the Gacaca courts. Established in 2002, Gacaca was a community-based justice system that allowed truth-telling, accountability, and reconciliation to take place at the local level.

Over a decade, more than two million cases were tried. Perpetrators confessed, survivors spoke, and communities began the long process of healing.Unity and reconciliation were further enshrined in Rwanda’s 2003 Constitution, which emphasizes inclusiveness, power-sharing, and the constant pursuit of solutions through dialogue and consensus.

Today, Rwanda stands as a testament to what is possible when a nation chooses to confront its past with honesty and courage.

Distinguished guests,

Despite this progress, the negative forces that led to the genocide against the Tutsi have not disappeared. Genocide ideology, denial, and negationism continue to spread, sometimes openly, sometimes subtly, across regions and continents.

In our own neighborhood, particularly in the Great Lakes region, these dangerous narratives are contributing to ongoing instability. In the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, extremist ideologies targeting Tutsi communities, including Banyamulenge, continue to fuel violence, persecution, and displacement.

We must be clear: silence in the face of such warning signs is complicity. We have seen before where denial and indifference can lead. We cannot afford, as an international community, to repeat the mistakes of 1994.

This also extends beyond our region. In various parts of the world, including in some Western capitals, genocide denial and distortion are finding new platforms. Stronger legal frameworks, better education, and greater accountability are needed to confront these trends.

This context is why a monument such as this, which you have established here at Ashesi University, in a place where young minds are shaped and empowered, is very significant.

Ashesi, as the college of excellence that you are, are once more leading African Academic institutions on creating awareness on this atrocious crime perpetrated on our continent in a not-so-distant past. You are making a statement a loud statement that the lives we lost in Rwanda, the men, women, children – they were important to our collective Africanness and humanity and that it is important for today’s generation and the generations to come to remember the history of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, not to revisit the pains of those dark 100 days but to build a future that refuses genocide denial, rejects its ideology, defends victims and stands up to fight any force that will seek to take Rwanda, or any other country in Africa or the world to such a place ever again. Thank you for this determination.

In closing, I wish to invite us all to stand once more and pay tribute to the men here with us; Major General Henry Kwami Anyidoho and members of the Ghanaian Contingent, who stood with Rwanda at a time when most of the world looked the other way. We appreciate and honor your humanity and bravery as His Excellency President Kagame highlighted when he decorated General Anyidoho and General Joseph Narh Adinkrah of blessed memory with Rwanda’s National Medal of Bravery, Indengabaganizi.

Dear friends, together, we can ensure that “Never Again” is not merely a slogan, but a lived reality.

Thank you!

75 Organizations Engage Ashesi Talent at 20th Annual Career Fair

The 20th Ashesi annual career fair brought together 75 organizations from across sectors, including telecommunications, real estate, and finance. The event was supported by Gold Sponsors: Ghana National Petroleum Corporation, Stanbic Bank Ghana Ltd, Tullow Ghana Ltd; Silver sponsors eServices Africa Limited, Graduate Guidance Group, Harlequin, and One Africa Markets Ltd; and Bronze sponsors CH Group, Chopbox Technologies Ltd, InvestCorp Asset Management, Margins ID Group, and Nestlé Ghana Ltd. The two-day event created opportunities for students and alumni at different career stages to engage directly with employers.

At the opening ceremony, held under the theme “Employers as Partners in Leadership,” Ashesi University President Patrick Awuah underscored the importance of strong partnerships with industry.

“We understand that we need to partner with the organizations that will hire our graduates and those that will invest in the startups that our graduates build,” he said. “That is why, from day one, we have maintained a close partnership with corporate Ghana.”

Ahead of the in-person event, a virtual career fair was organized to extend access to employer interactions. This was complemented by a series of competitions designed to build practical skills and showcase student talent. In the elevator pitch competition, students presented themselves to prospective employers in 60 seconds, while the CV competition, targeted at the Class of 2026, recognized students whose profiles demonstrated both depth and breadth of achievement.

A programing competition also challenged participants to develop code-based solutions to problems, alongside an engineering competition. The Most Enterprising Business Pitch Competition required students to pitch their enterprises in 3–5 minutes for possible funding and partnership opportunities.

A leadership dialogue held alongside the fair explored the theme “Leading Multiple Generations in the Workplace,” addressing issues such as emotional maturity in leadership, evolving interpretations of professionalism, and fostering mutual respect across generational groups.

Throughout the event, employers engaged students at designated booths, with several conducting on-the-spot interviews and recruitment conversations.

“Getting to sit through interviews from Newmont Corporation, Obengs, Telecel, and others was a real learning experience,” shared Natalie Adu-Gyamfi ’29. “My LinkedIn network is growing, and I was able to put my CV out there ahead of the long break.”

 Abigail Welbeck, Director for Career Services also shared: “Conversations with some students revealed that many gained clarity about their career interests.” She added: “Others also built their confidence from the engagement with employers, while getting insights into what is required in the workplace.”