New Lenses in Teaching: How Ashesi Faculty Are Integrating Climate Thinking Across Courses

Here are some interesting insights from faculty members’ contributions to climate & sustainability education at Ashesi:

Professor Joseph Kwame Adjei (Computer Science – Systems Analysis & Design, and E-Commerce)
Prof. Adjei delivers climate education through an “Emerging Issues” module in both Systems Analysis & Design and E-commerce. In Systems Analysis & Design, he addresses sustainability challenges in AI system design, particularly the massive energy requirements of AI infrastructure and its impact on global warming. Additionally, he challenges students to develop technology solutions for environmental monitoring, specifically tasking them to create concepts that could help address the illegal mining (galamsey) problem that government agencies struggle to monitor effectively.

In E-commerce, he takes a multifaceted approach to sustainability issues. He examines the environmental impact of e-commerce packaging, emphasizing the urgent need for sustainable packaging solutions as online shopping continues to grow. He also explores e-commerce’s potential to reduce emissions through optimized delivery routes and efficient transport systems.

 

Dr. Mensimah Kwaffo (African Francophone Literature)
This semester, Dr. Kwaffo taught African Francophone literature spanning pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial eras through analysis of primary texts. She identified the contemporary literature section on urbanization as a natural entry point for future incorporation. For next iterations, she’s considering incorporating climate and sustainability themes such as ecofeminism literature examining gendered responses to environmental challenges; historical narratives about ancient civilizations and environmental collapse; post-colonial texts on environmental exploitation; urban migration driven by climate pressures; indigenous African ecological wisdom; climate justice and inequality; and emerging climate fiction — ‘Cli-Fi’.

 

Takeaways
This week’s conversations highlight two important patterns: First, the “Emerging Issues” approach provides flexibility to address current sustainability issues as part of new developments in the field/discipline being taught. Second, literature and humanities courses offer rich opportunities to explore climate through multiple lenses—gender, history, justice, and cultural knowledge systems—demonstrating that climate education can serve as a lever for introducing interdisciplinary discourses around core disciplinary learning.

Climate and Sustainability Education Experiences Faculty Members

Here are some Climate and Sustainability Education experiences from our faculty members:

Dr. Yaw Delali Bensah (Materials Science & Engineering)

Dr. Bensah dedicates parts of his lectures in Material Science and Chemistry to addressing topics around waste minimization, reduction, and recycling in materials processing. In his graduate course co-taught with ETH Zurich faculty, he focuses on alternative materials that are less toxic and generate less waste. This semester, he’s supervising students on two climate-focused projects: biodiesel production from palm kernel oil (with significantly lower emissions than fossil fuels) and glass recycling for geotechnical construction applications. He’s working to make these climate connections more explicit in his syllabi going forward.

 

Mr. Nii-Tete Yartey (Dance & Performance)

Nii-Tete teaches climate education through traditional Ghanaian dance forms . He explains how indigenous practices embedded conservation wisdom —taboos about farming or fishing on certain days were actually about giving nature time to regenerate. He plans to assign creative projects like video challenges where students communicate climate themes through dance, providing embodied learning through climate communication.

 

Dr. Sampson Dankyi Asare (Computer Science – Algorithms)

Dr. Asare integrates climate education differently across his courses. In Modeling & Simulation, students work with climate data using Python, visualizing effects, and run ecosystem simulations. In Algorithms, where foundational concepts are the priority, he includes climate-related options among final projects; this semester, 2-3 of 20 projects centered on weather and climate. He incorporates climate applications when teaching concepts like the traveling salesman problem, connecting route optimization to fuel efficiency and emissions. Next year, he plans to increase climate project options to at least 5.

 

Key Patterns

Faculty are delivering climate education through:

(1) dedicated course content on climate and sustainability principles.

(2) hands-on projects addressing real climate challenges.

(3) explicit connections between disciplinary concepts and climate applications.

(4) diverse pedagogical approaches—from embodied learning through performing arts to data modeling and simulation.

Reducing Waste and Reusing Water: We Conserve

At Ashesi the wastewater generated is treated at the University’s biogas plant facility with an integrated wastewater resources treatment system. Effluence meets the IFC/WHO and Ghana Standard Authority guidelines for wastewater treated for irrigation Treated effluent water is reused for landscaping and greening of the campus all year.

Ashesi University has adopted a number of water conservation policies and standards to ensure little or zero dependency on the Ghanaian utility service provider known as Ghana Water Company Limited. Ashesi University has adopted a rainwater harvesting plan where rainwater is collected from the roofs of the school facilities and channeled into concrete water storage tanks that are situated below several buildings situated on the University’s campus. This process has been inculcated into the architectural plans of the University from inception and therefore most of the buildings have been designed to have water storage tanks that meet BS EN 16941:2018, where water storage capacity should meet 18 days of water consumption by end users.

Ashesi University also meets Requirement G2 under water efficiency regulations that insists on a daily consumption rate of 110 litres per person. The harvested water is then taken through stringent water purification processes to ensure the quality of the water meets WHO standards (GDWQ), parts of BS 8680-2020 of Water Safety Plan Code of Practice whilst the water tanks are maintained to meet the standards of BS 8558 in the aspect of maintenance and quality assessment.

The second adopted practice pertaining to water re-use has to do with grey and black water recycling as a non-potable water supply for the purpose of horticultural irrigation. This serves as an alternative to help avoid the use of high-quality drinking water for non-potable requirements and helps to reduce consumption of quality drinking water by 75%

The Coast Busters: Saving the Coast One Bottle at a Time in the Sea

This project aims to design a living sea defense system (bio-concrete tetrapods) by incorporating organisms capable of carrying out plastics and biocementation and bioremediation. Plastics used will be obtained from plastic waste found in the sea.

Method:
Several organisms have been designed and engineered to achieve the goals of the project. The plastic degradation is achieved by introducing genes responsible for plastic degradation to its constituent monomers, (ethylene glycol and terephthalate).The biocementation is achieved by adding genes capable to undertake the hydrolysis of urea, inducing precipitation of the calcium carbonate and thus cementation. The organisms have a self-regulation ability to maintain a balanced environment and self-repair mechanisms induced by increased light in the tetrapod due to cracking. In addition, the tetrapod contains Bioluminescent organisms for natural illumination of the environment. In Ghana the coastal zone covers 6.5% of the 238,535km2 land area (Armah & Amlalo, 1998). Coastlines worldwide account for about 26% of all biological diversity, composed of, but not limited to, seabirds, clams, crabs, starfish, anemones, fish, kelp, and marine mammals among may others.

In Ghana the coastal area is also “home to more than a quarter of the country’s population and contributes as much as 80% of the country’s annual capture fish production” (NDF, Worldbank WACA report, 2013, p.1). However, coastal erosion and flooding resulting from the impacts of human activities, inappropriate systems put in place for managing coastal ecosystems, and climate change and sea-level rise remain major threats to coastal dwellers and their livelihoods. Severe erosion rates have been recorded for the eastern coast particularly following the construction of the Akosombo hydroelectric dam (Ly, 1980). Erosion has affected the social and economic life of local populations, threatened cultural heritage, and hindered coastal tourism in addition to the destruction of houses and other physical infrastructure. Some of the most affected communities are found in the Keta Municipality, which forms part of the eastern coast (about 149km) stretching from Aflao at the Ghana/Togo border in the east to the Laloi Lagoon in Prampram to the west. (NDF, Worldbank WACA report, 2013, p.1).

Ashesi’s Engineering Department Head and students in her bioengineering class sought out biological solutions to mitigate the coastal erosion problem to contribute to ensuring the conservation, restoration, and sustainable use of terrestrial habitation (SDG 15.1). The proof of concept is under discussion with Ghana’s Environmental Protection Agency. It is our hope that it will potentially impact terrestrial and climate-related policy. The goal of the project was to design a living sea defence system (bio-concrete tetrapods) by incorporating organisms capable of removing plastics along the coastline and converting to biocementation and bioremediation. It was to “take urgent and significant action to reduce the degradation of natural habitats and halt the loss of biodiversity.” (SDG 15.5)

Equipping Teachers, Igniting Futures

In many Ghanaian classrooms, science and math lessons can feel abstract and distant from daily life. But a growing movement at Ashesi is changing that reality, one teacher at a time. 

Through the Practical Education Network (PEN), which Ashesi supports and partners with, teachers are trained to design hands-on, inquiry-based experiments using everyday materials. Imagine a student in a rural community building a simple circuit from discarded bottles, or using local items to explore forces and motion. These are not just clever exercises; they spark curiosity, deepen understanding, and build confidence in STEM fields. 

Recently, Ashesi donated 600 PEN science manuals to public school teachers in Ga East and Akuapem South districts, along with orientation sessions on how to use them in the classroom. The manuals connect national curriculum standards to active, learner-centered experiments, helping students learn by doing. 

By strengthening teacher capacity and making STEM learning more tangible, Ashesi is helping expand educational opportunity beyond the university walls. Students who grow up in classrooms enriched by inquiry-based learning are better prepared to pursue higher education, contribute to innovations, and drive sustainable change across Africa. 

Graduation Rates of Students in the 20th Decile at Ashesi University

The graduation rates of Ashesi students overall for the past 5 years is represented in Figure 1. Not all students graduate in four years. Ashesi’s trend for four-year and six-year graduation rates, (using the average of the three last years to the year) yields the table below.

 

Table 1. Graduation Rates 2021-2025

 

The Graduation Rate target expected of the 20th Decile students in the fourth year of enrollment at Ashesi University is 75%, however they surpass it each year.  See Figure 2.

The students in the 20th Decile have a higher graduating rate than that other Ashesi students. See Figure 2.

 

 

 

MASO Rural Business Academy

An Ashesi senior lecturer in Entrepreneurship worked to alleviate poverty in Ghana’s cocoa-growing regions by providing entrepreneurship training to local youth. “The objective of the MASO Business Academy is to help participants identify and engage with local employment opportunities,” she explains. “By so doing, they can earn an income and subsequently gain purchasing power to help boost economic growth in their localities.” The program involves coaching, mentoring, and incubation for the entrepreneurs and their businesses. With expertise from other successful entrepreneurs, as well as Ashesi’s faculty the process allows participants to explore opportunity spaces, build and test business models, and receive grant support. By the end of the project, 625 men and 656 women between the ages of 17 and 25 had completed the training. In total, 1,281 participants started 763
businesses after their training.

Learning about the SDGs through Community Life’s Experiences

There are several ways to engage the displaced and refugee community with the SDGs, including being taught the SDGs, being educated so ones SDG situation improves, or engaging in certain activities which make one want to appreciate the benefits of an SDG(s).

According to political analysts, there are over 4 million refugees living in over 300 refugee camps across Africa. Ashesi recognizes that to make an impact it should focus on only 3-5 refugee camps, which include Kakuma in northern Kenya, Nyarugusu in western Tanzania and Bidibidi in north-western Uganda.

Ashesi also believes that the responsibility should not be borne by only one department and so organically, at Ashesi, Board members, the Admissions team, students, and faculty each play varying roles in relation to the SDGs and refugees. The Admissions team travel to remote select refugee camps in different African countries to recruit through educating on what a quality education (SDG 4) could look like and to offer scholarships (SDG 1) to brilliant refugee students. Board members donate their funds and help set up foundations (SDG 1) to support the engagement and conferences which educate the greater university community in Africa about refugee needs and possibilities in higher education. See here and here.

Academic Affairs through its membership in the Open Society Universities Network consistently offers to hire faculty in refugee situations to teach at Ashesi, offering their families a better life because of the employment. Ashesi strives to implement the SDGs by modeling them and providing others with SDG lived and sustainable experiences.

Our alumni who are interested and talented in entrepreneurship emanating from their Ashesi courses, are taught the SDGs, especially graduates who are awarded fellowships to the Ashesi Venture Incubator (AVI). These AVI fellows are taught skills in sustainability, sustainable development, how to provide employment opportunities and decent work for employees (SDG 8). They are taught to be resilient, through appreciation of failure and to foster innovation to remain novel and relevant (SDG 9).

One AVI fellow, Edel Togobo an Ashesi alum, the founder of Edelicious Lifestyle & Edelicious Farms (Edelicious Network), offers a platform that supports the adoption of healthier eating habits through convenient menu designs, meal prep packages, and fruit delivery services (SDG 2 and 3).

Another AVI fellow and Ashesi alum, Christian Hakizimana the co-founder of Hakikris farms, packages, sells, and delivers top-quality local rice to customers and retail shops in Burundi, East Africa. He aims to bridge the gap between local farmers and the market and, to serve customers with trusted branded local rice in Africa and the world (SDG 2, 3, and 8).See the link for more https://www.nexti2i.com/ashesi-venture-incubator/ and https://www.nexti2i.com/avi-mentorship-recruitment-programme/

Two major SDGs Ashesi teaches its communities and alumni, include SDG 4 (Quality education) and SDG 8 (Decent work and economic growth). Our lecturers, including Rebecca Awuah, and some Ashesi recent graduates, in the spirit of national service, model quality teaching to the teachers of our neighboring middle school, when they volunteer in the schools.

Our students must complete 40 hours of community engagement and improvement as one of the graduation requirements at Ashesi. During this period, our students teach the SDGs to various communities without necessarily defining the SDGs. For example, one student spends time empathizing with street children (SDG 1) in our immediate community to build trust before holding conversations on sex education (SDG 3) and the necessary skills for a responsible and productive life. These skills include critical thinking, problem solving skills, leadership, which are all tenets of a quality education (SDG 4). Another student empowers marginalized youth in the community by equipping them with basic IT Literacy, basic reading and writing skills.

Generally, Ashesi University is known in the community as a model of quality education, and it is our intent and the community’s desire that we impact them with sustainable development.

Ashesi University Collaborating with NGOs: Volunteers, Research, Education and SDGs

Ashesi cultivates in its students the spirit of care and giving, often demonstrated in volunteering.  As part of Ashesi’s liberal arts core curriculum students complete a four-semester series leadership course with a culminating exercise exploring and implementing leadership as service.  Students are expected to volunteer to serve a community of their choice where they put into practice their emerging leadership identity, nascent skill in leading others and practice leading within the confines of societal and economic systems.  Students who do not volunteer to serve in a community do not meet a graduation requirement.  Consequently, every Ashesi student on the trajectory to graduate identifies a community need and works independently or with other Ashesi students in a team, to collaborate with the community members to solve or mitigate a community challenge.  Examples of problems Ashesi student volunteers have tackled in various communities can be found here.

NGOs by default focus on at least one SDG, and when Ashesi collaborates with them, the university broadens its impact on meeting the SDG goals. Furthermore, Ashesi University helps its members find themselves and foster their strengths. One example is how Ashesi continues to support and collaborate with an NGO founded by one of its fulltime engineering faculty members, Dr Heather Beem.  Her NGO program “PEN” (Practical Education Network) is focused on improving student learning outcomes of science through efficient and practical training of middle and high school science teachers, in Ghana and other African countries. PEN’s mission is to provide resources and capacity building support to STEM teachers to improve learning outcomes of the students they serve. PEN hosts teacher training workshops that teach secondary teachers in Ghana how to create hands-on STEM teaching materials for practicals using locally available materials. The teachers are expected to train other teachers in their schools, resulting in a cascading effect, which helps the teachers better educate their students.

Ashesi and PEN’s partnership was sparked in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic which forced many, if not all, interactions to take place online. Because PEN focuses on hands-on and experiential training, hosting online classes wasn’t in their foreseeable future. However, with funding from Ashesi’s faculty resources and  with the help of the EC, Ashesi’s Educational Collaborative unit, PEN developed several online modules and workshops, and even kickstarted the financial empowerment of the teachers to train other teachers. Thus far, PEN has trained over 3,300 teachers on hands-on STEM activities. More about their impact can be found here.

Ashesi has been teaching-focused from its inception to date, and is currently moving towards strengthening its research. Student research, immediate – alumni are being hired as research interns, and funding is actively sought to support scholarship. Some faculty have established research labs, e.g., AREL , Ashesi Research and Education Lab

Preserving Our Land on Campus

On Green Ghana Day, the Ashesi Community members, including its President Dr. Awuah, engage in planting
trees on campus. The hope is to make this a sustained/consistent practice to better protect our environment. In
the photo is Dr. Awuah and the Director of Operations from the Ghana Forestry Commission, Hugh Brown.

Additionally, Ashesi campus’ slopes with broad shallow valleys and ridges running in the east-west direction which foster arid conditions. Consequently, the soil’s condition necessitated the use of drought-tolerant plants such as bougainvillea, agaves, acacias, royal palms, the euphorbias, ground covers (rheo discolours), sedum, and coneflowers to sustain the appearance of the campus landscape and to minimize water use for landscaping and campus greening

 

 

Climate Action Awareness and Adaptation Measures Implemented at Ashesi and Beyond

Increased temperatures and longer periods between rains driven by climate change are expected to continue exacerbating water supply issues in Berekuso, the peri-urban locale where our university, Ashesi, is situated. Ashesi implemented a water restriction and drought action plan, which includes: water catchment systems, high-efficiency washing machines in hostel laundry facilities, low-flow shower heads and toilets, limiting water usage, and an emergency action plan. (SDG 13 Indicator 13.2) Ashesi was invited to be a member of the U7+ initiative and at the inaugural summit of the U7+ in Paris, Ashesi committed to creating courses available to all students related to climate, biodiversity, and sustainability. It will prepare them to address the key challenges and mitigation strategies regarding the earth and mainstreaming the information in core courses (SDG 13 Indicator 13.3). In fulfilling our commitment, we have hired a climate scientist who has begun the embedding process. In conjunction with Ashesi’s institute of climate action, the Ghana Climate Innovation Center (GCIC), Ashesi faculty, and students whose research interests are in climate change conduct research on climate economics, climate and gender, and climate and entrepreneurship, to name a few, to pursue opportunities for generating new knowledge that will help society adapt to climate disruption.

Additionally, Ashesi’s GCIC Business Incubation Program supports transformative entrepreneurs with innovative solutions and businesses that aid in mitigating or adapting to climate change (13.b). Incubatees implementing climate adaptation solutions to agriculture will improve production and increase the resiliency of small farmers to climate change. El Balicon Limited is a vegetable farm enclave in Wa, in the Upper West Region of Ghana. The vegetable farm enclave is a mechanised drip, shower, or mist and furrow irrigation system with an Antor 17 HP diesel water pump and a 1.5 HP Shakti solar pump near the Black Volta River. It was created to address the lack of access to water on farmland for all-year-round production to further address the persistent shortage and non-availability of fresh vegetables on the Ghanaian market. Sesi Technologies develops affordable technologies to help African farmers and agribusinesses increase productivity and reduce losses. GrainMate, a product of Sesi Technologies, is an affordable grain moisture meter that helps farmers accurately measure the moisture content in their grains to help them prevent post-harvest losses. Compared to commercial moisture meters on the market, which retail at about GHS 2000 locally, GrainMate is three times more affordable, retailing at only Ghc500.

Ashesi engages local leadership in dialogue to ensure that communities in Berekuso have access to credible, informative science. We work with leadership to identify opportunities for the institution to provide education, research, and pilot projects on adaptation and for larger projects that can be pursued in collaboration to improve the resiliency of the community’s infrastructure, energy systems, water system, food systems, and transportation systems (SDG 13 Indicator 13.3).

Partnering for a Multiplier Effect

Ashesi University and ETH Zurich, Switzerland, have partnered and collaborated with industry to develop a master’s program in Mechatronic Engineering established on Ashesi’s campus. The program curriculum co-designed by the triad with an emphasis on the African context integrates core areas of automation and production engineering and leadership modules such as decision-making, economics, and management to help students build strong engineering careers. Courses are co-taught in tandem with Ashesi and ETH faculty. The program is intentional in recruiting students from the lower 20th decile from different regions in Africa and provides full comprehensive scholarships, sponsored by the industry partners. Ashesi also provides various forms of scholarships and ETH supports the operations of the program.

Industry partners were selected because of their operational presence on the continent and they include ABB, Barry Callebaut, Bühler, HPW, Holcim, Nestlé, and Tetra Pak. The involvement of these industry partners present in Africa ensures that the program addresses regional market needs. In addition to providing mentorship and industrial internships, our industry partners offer job opportunities in the region after a students’ successful completion of the program. Students also indirectly learn how collaboration and partnerships work and the richness in knowledge transfer that emerges from such associations.

 

For example, with expert faculty from both Ashesi University and ETH Zurich students synthesize a variety of areas of expertise as seen from the research sampling of faculty below:

A. Meike Akveli
– Improving mathematics diagnostic tests using item analysis
– The perceived impact of mathematics competitions on teachers and their classrooms in Puerto Rico, Switzerland, and the UK

B. Gudela Grote
– Research Project: Facing Change With Stability: The Dynamics of Occupational Career Trajectories
– Research Project: Boundaries for career success? How work–home integration and perceived supervisor expectation affect
careers

C. Eleni Chatzi
– Data-Centric Monitoring of Wind Farms: Combining Sources of Information
– Effects of improved on-farm crop storage on perceived stress and perceived coping in pregnant women—Evidence from a
cluster- randomized controlled trial in Kenya

D. Edoardo Mazza
– In-vitro investigation of endothelial monolayer retention on an inflow VAD cannula inside a beating heart phantom

E. Fritz Brugger
– CSR and local conflicts in African mining communities
– Do Social Investments by Mining Companies Harm Citizen-State Relations? Experimental Evidence from Burkina Faso

G. Thomas Bernauer
– Policy framing, design and feedback can increase public support for costly food waste regulation
– Trade policy announcements can increase price volatility in global food commodity markets
– Economic and political drivers of environmental impact shifting between countries
– Environmental Concern Leads to Trade Skepticism on the Political Left and Right