Ashesi’s Executive Team has dedicated a student residence hall in honor of Kofi A Tawiah. The Tawiah Hall, formerly known as Hall 2B, honors the legacy of the Ghanaian philanthropist and Ashesi donor, who has helped fund scholarships for students through the Kofi Tawiah Foundation for Good Citizenship. The student hall was completed in 2017, enabling us to increase on-campus student accommodation, and houses a small student salon and barbershop.
Kofi Abrompa Tawiah was born on June 14, 1946, in Abenase (near Akim Oda) in the Eastern Region of Ghana. He would eventually earn a scholarship from the African Scholarship Program of American Universities, which enabled him to study at the University of California, Berkeley. He earned degrees in engineering and an MBA in Finance and International Business from Berkeley. After college, he pursued a career in the United States. He founded E-3 Systems in 1989 and grew it into a successful IT infrastructure cabling company in the San Francisco Bay Area.
He has now created an endowment fund at the Ashesi University Foundation to help provide scholarships for young Ghanaians and Africans into perpetuity. In explaining his philanthropy, Kofi Tawiah describes a desire to support Ashesi’s vision of a transformed Africa and to add his weight behind a founding team that took high personal sacrifice and risk to pursue this vision.
“I believe, just as Ashesi does, that Africa’s transformation falls on the shoulders of the youth and future generations of Africans, who necessarily have to be ethical and entrepreneurial to realize the goal of transforming Africa,” said Kofi Tawiah. “Ashesi’s mission to offer an education that instills ethical and entrepreneurial conduct in its students is just the type of education the youth of Africa need if they are going to be able to transform our continent. From my sense of responsibility for doing what I can towards the transformation of Africa, I feel an obligation to support the realization of the Ashesi vision any way I can.”
At Ashesi, we believe that the future of Africa depends on our ability to tap into the leadership and problem-solving potential of young people across the continent. With a unique curriculum built on experiential, multidisciplinary learning, Ashesi helps students develop the skills they need to drive change. We are very grateful for Kofi Tawiah’s contributions to Ashesi over the years and are pleased to honor him in this way.
Click here to learn more about how you can support the education of young African leaders at Ashesi.
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