
Videos
In these videos created by Ashesi students, see the far-reaching impact of our community:
Scholarships Empower Students to Serve the Greater Good
Ashesi scholarships make a life-changing education possible for nearly half of our student body. For Derick Omari ’18, a scholarship provided him with the tools and skills needed to found Tech Era, his award-winning social enterprise. In August, Tech Era partnered with the Ashesi D:Lab to launch an assistive technology makerspace in Ghana.
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Student Housing Provides an Immersive Campus Experience
Thanks to support from generous donors, almost 50% of current students live in on-campus housing. Student housing is vital to the growth of Ashesi: it contributes to diversity and inclusion, attracts more women to Ashesi, and strengthens our financial sustainability. Here, students share how living on campus has shaped their Ashesi experience.
Research Drives Innovation and African-Led Solutions
The World Bank reports that only 1% of global research scholarship comes from Africa. We believe in the importance of African-led research and under the leadership of Ashesi’s new Provost, the school is building a thriving research ecosystem which will help ensure Ashesi’s ability to recruit and retain top student and faculty talent.
18 Years of Ashesi: Educating Ethical, Entrepreneurial Leaders in Africa
As Ashesi University celebrates its 18th anniversary, we feel nothing but gratitude to our faculty, staff, students, alumni, donors and friends for helping build Ashesi. For nearly two decades we have been committed to raising the bar for higher education in Africa, and Ashesi is now recognized as a leader in preparing students for meaningful lives and careers. We could not have done this without this amazing community. Here's to 18 years and beyond.
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WISE Prize for Education 2017 Ashesi Documentary
The prestigious WISE Prize for Education was presented to Patrick Awuah, founder and president of Ashesi.
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Ashesi on PBS NewsHour
When Patrick Awuah - a former Microsoft executive who was educated in the U.S. -- returned to his home country of Ghana, his goal of starting a software company was dashed by the lack of a qualified workforce. So instead he founded Ashesi University, which is guided by principles of ethical leadership, innovation and entrepreneurship. Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro reports.
Recap: Launch of the Ghana Climate Innovation Center
Funded through a grant from the World Bank Group and partners, the Ghana Climate Innovation Center (GCIC) is a green project incubation hub where entrepreneurs and startup ventures can access support to develop their innovative ideas into strong and viable businesses. This video shows a recap of the center's launch at Ashesi University, where it will be based.
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Green Business: Ghana Bamboo Bikes
Ghana Bamboo Bikes Initiative is a fore-running social enterprise in bamboo industrialization for the creation of jobs and employment for the growing number of Ghanaian women and youth.
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Green Business: Fire without the Smoke
learn how Global Bamboo makes smokeless charcoal and the impact of GCIC on their business.
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Green Business: From Waste to Wealth
GCIC's incubation program focuses on nurturing green business and startups to make them better. Find out how GCIC helped John Afari-Idan CEO of Biogas Technologies Limited become a better entrepreneur.
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Climate Innovation Business - The Pulse on JoyNews
An interview with Ruka Sanusi, the Executive Director of the GCIC.
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See for yourself the far-reaching impact that Ashesi students, staff, and faculty are generating. In these three videos, you’ll go behind-the-scenes to hear from project leaders and beneficiaries.
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Teaching Engineers to Create
Nicholas, Ashesi Lab Manager, started the optional Monday lab sessions, nicknamed the Makers Skills’ Lab to introduce students to practical engineering skills. Open to all students, the sessions are informal and hands-on, and students get to work on a range of projects from 3D-modeling and printing, to building electrical circuits.
Designing Financial Platforms to Benefit the Working Poor
While their work plays a vital role in helping to protect the environment, mechanisms have not been developed to adequately compensate waste pickers, who are really ‘informal recyclers’, for the services they provide. Earning an average of $40 per month, most of these waste pickers are unable to make ends meet. To address this gap, a team of students from the MIT D-Lab and Ashesi’s D:Lab are working to create tools that will not only increase the earnings of the waste pickers, but will also give them access to financial platforms to help grow their income.
Transforming Higher Education Across Africa
As a pioneer in blending the liberal arts and sciences in Africa, Ashesi is recognized across the world as a model for higher education on the continent. With a vision of African universities leading the continent's renaissance, we are reaching out to colleagues and partners in higher education to build an idea-sharing platform; one where university leaders and stakeholders can collaborate to harness best practices in teaching, management, and administration.
Speaker: Jewel Thompson, Ashesi University Lecturer and Incubator Manager for the Ashesi Venture Incubator.
Take a virtual tour of Ashesi's new bioengineering lab.
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Listen for the Beep!
As part of the Leadership for Engineering Class, students took on real world challenges. This group worked with students at the Akropong School of the Blind to build this solution. Fitted with sensors, the cane was designed to improve mobility for the visually impaired.
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Engineering Agriculture Solutions
For their class projects, freshmen in our Introduction to Engineering class teamed up in groups to design solar powered irrigation systems for farmers in rural Ghana. The students designed the system to detect when soil needed or had enough water, and power on or off automatically. Here's a quick video showing some of the finished projects.
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Launching Ashesi's Engineering Program
October 2015: Catch the video recap of our engineering launch ceremony. Highlighting musical performances, speeches, faculty interviews and a look inside the new engineering building, this video is not one to miss.
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An Engineering Program Built on Love and Compassion
A look at the work done to develop Ashesi's new Engineering program, and how a Fetzer Institute grant allowed faculty to deign values of love and compassion into our curriculum.
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Engineering Students Demonstrate Solar Generator Prototypes
Two weeks. That was exactly how long our first-year Engineering students had to design and build a working prototype for a solar-powered mini-generator to charge electronic devices.
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Construction of Hostel 2D adds 25% more beds to on-campus housing
Partially funded by USAID, the construction of Hostel 2D adds 120 additional beds to on-campus housing. Rain-water harvesting and solar water heaters were installed as part of the project, consistent with Ashesi’s water security and energy conservation policy.
Audrey S-Darko: the Ashesi Alumna tackling soil degradation and boosting crop yields in Ghana
Smallholder farmers produce an estimated 70% of Africa's food, but many struggle with low crop yields due to poor soil health and traditional farming practices. Alumna Audrey S-Darko 19's Sabon Sake provides clean soil regeneration products and training that are currently helping some 7,200 smallholder farmers increase their yield.
How to find your voice as a woman in Africa | Yawa Hansen-Quao '07
Ghanaian women’s right activist, Yawa Hansen-Quao shares keys that will help women and girls find their voice and rise up in leadership in the public sphere.
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Changing Africa's single story with science and technology | Regina Agyare '05
Regina talks about how the one-sided stories painted about Africa could be changed using science and technology as a means of social transformation.
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Dorcas Amoh Mensah '16 | Skoll World Forum Emerging Leaders Interview
The Emerging Leaders Initiative brings together the next generation of social entrepreneurs from around the world, selected and supported in partnership by the Skoll Foundation and Mastercard Foundation.
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Kpetermeni Toquoi Siakor '15 | Skoll World Forum Emerging Leaders Interview
The Emerging Leaders Initiative brings together the next generation of social entrepreneurs from around the world, selected and supported in partnership by the Skoll Foundation and Mastercard Foundation.
TED Talk: How can education foster ethical citizens?
At TED's "We The Future", Ashesi President Patrick Awuah shares a vision for African higher education.
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SXSW EDU 2019
Ashesi President Patrick Awuah speaks on The Ashesi Way: turning challenges into opportunities.
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TED Talk: How can education foster ethical citizens?
At TED's "We The Future", Ashesi President Patrick Awuah shares a vision for African higher education.
WISE@Accra
A one-on-one chat with Patrick at the 2018 WISE summit in Accra.
Ashesi at the Center for Strategic & International Studies
A conversation on future directions for higher education in Africa.
Winner of $500,000 global education award talks to Al Jazeera
The founder of a university college in Ghana and campaigner to raise the quality of higher education in Africa has won a major global education award. Patrick Awuah left Ghana in the 1980s to take up a scholarship in the US.
Ashesi at the IFC in Washington, DC
On May 18, 2017 Ashesi held a panel in partnership with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) in Washington, D.C on Innovation in Sub-Saharan Africa Higher Education and Lessons from the U.S.
2017 Solutions Summit: Mainstreaming Social Entrepreneurship
Live from the World Economic Forum's Solutions Summit with Patrick Awuah.
2016 McCabe Lecture with Patrick Awuah, Jr. `89
Patrick, a Swarthmore University alumnus, delivered this year's McCabe Lecture "The Liberal Arts and the Future of Africa" at his alma mater. In his lecture, Patrick shares his thoughts about the challenges and opportunities Africa faces - and why he has come to believe more strongly than ever that a liberal education is fundamentally important to Africa's future.
Building the first liberal arts college in Ghana
In April 2016, the Google re:Work team gathered leaders from across industries and across the globe to talk about the future of work.
An Introduction to Ashesi
Founded in 2002, Ashesi aims to spark a renaissance in Africa by educating a new generation of ethical, entrepreneurial leaders. This video introduces Ashesi faculty, alumni and students who share what Ashesi means to them.
Patrick Awuah, 2015 MacArthur Fellow
Ashesi President Patrick Awuah is an education entrepreneur creating a new model for higher education in Africa that combines training in ethical leadership, a liberal arts tradition, and skills for contemporary African needs and opportunities.
The Inspiration Behind Ashesi
Patrick Awuah speaks with the Authenticity Project, about his leadership journey and hopes for Ashesi.
Courage as the Basis for Creativity and Innovation
Patrick speaks at the 2014 WISE conference.
TED Talk: Educating a new generation of African leaders
Patrick's famous 2007 TED Talk, in which he makes the case that a liberal arts education is critical to forming true leaders.
University Of California Berkeley, Haas School of Business
Patrick returns to his alma mater as a guest speaker for the Dean's Speakers Series.
Zeitgeist Americas 2011
Patrick shares his hope that Ashesi will help spark a renaissance in Africa.
Talks at Google
Patrick shares how fostering innovation is the key to creating lasting change in Africa.