Jun 18, 2018
His Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, President of Ghana, will be the Guest Speaker at Ashesi’s 2018 Commencement Ceremony this Saturday, June 23. This will be the second time the President visits campus, after he first visited in 2016.
“We are honored to host the President at our Commencement this year,” said Ashesi President Patrick Awuah. “We welcomed the President to campus in 2016, when he visited to learn more about Ashesi. He had expressed pride in our work, and in our commitment to Ghana and Africa. As we celebrate our first Commencement as a fully chartered private university, we are excited to have him join us again, to share messages with the Class of 2018, families and friends, and the world.”
H.E Akufo-Addo has been a recognizable figure in Ghana’s history for nearly four decades. In 1975, he returned to Ghana after a career in France to practice law, and eventually co-founded the law firm Akufo-Addo, Prempeh & Co. The firm is known to have trained some of Ghana’s best legal professionals. He was the first Chairperson of DHL (GH) Ltd; Chairperson, Kinesec Communications (Co) Ltd, publishers of The Statesman; and the first Chairperson of the Ghana Committee on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
H.E Akufo-Addo was also elected three times between 1996 and 2008 as Member of Parliament for the Abuakwa South constituency in the Eastern region of Ghana. From 2001 to 2007, he served as Cabinet Minister (first as Attorney-General and Minister for Justice for two years, and later as Foreign Minister for five years) in the government of President John Kufuor. As Attorney-General, he was responsible for the repeal of the Criminal Libel Law, which strengthened the free press in Ghana.
In March 2014, he announced his decision to seek his party’s nomination for the third time ahead of the 2016 election, after having previously represented the party in the 2008 and 2012 elections. He secured an unprecedented, landslide victory of 94.35% of the votes in the party’s presidential primary in October 2014; and was elected President of Ghana in the December 7th elections, after obtaining 53.85% of the total valid votes cast, as announced by the Electoral Commission.
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