News — ghana

Testimonies of African Americans Who returned to Africa & settled | YEAR OF RETURN
(via African Insider)

27-year-old Abdul-Samed is believed to be the tallest man in Ghana. He is an excellent football player and claims people come from different areas of Ghana to rent him to play for their teams. However, Abdul-Samed says he was not born tall. He claims he woke up one day and realized he was growing taller and his foot was getting bigger. No one can tell the reasons behind this increased height. One of his friends is concerned and believes he should seek medical opinions. The question that lingers is whether the height is natural or not. What do you think?

Dr. Ashitey Trebi-Ollennu is a robotics engineer at NASA, where he has served as the chief engineer and technical group leader for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which he joined in 1999. In addition to being a vital part of the JPL, Dr. Trebi-Ollennu was the lead engineer on the InSight Mission, the first deep interior mission on Mars, launched on May 5th, 2018.

Dr. Trebi-Ollennu was born in Accra, Ghana, and traveled to the United Kingdom, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in Avionic Engineering in 1991 from Queen Mary University of London. His lingering childhood fascination with planes encouraged him to continue his education at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Royal Military College of Science, Cranfield University in 1996, where he received a Ph.D. in Control Systems Engineering. Dr. Trebi-Ollennu was most fascinated by the science behind replacing human pilots with robots, thus inspiring the 2018 InSight mission in which the robotic arm his team built would go where no human has ever gone before, exploring the frozen water of Mars and deducing how planets form. His past projects on Mars include the Phoenix Mars Exploration Rover in 2003, which resulted in the discovery of water on Mars. In 2007, he worked on the Mars Lander, earning the NASA Exceptional Engineering Achievement Medal in 2008 for his contributions, the 2011 Mars Science Laboratory, and the InSight Mars Lander project in 2016.

Dr. Trebi-Ollennu is a fellow at the Institute of Engineering and Technology, the Royal Aeronautical Society, and the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences. His research at these institutes and at NASA focuses on planetary rovers and their operations, mechatronics, reconfigurable robots, and man-machine interactions.

In 2011, Dr. Trebi-Ollennu founded a non-profit organization called the Ghana Robotics Academy Foundation with the vision of inspiring young Ghanaians in STEM. The organization works to motivate the next generation by facilitating robotics and science clubs in public and private schools, organizing yearly workshops and competitions, and advocating for robotics programs to be a regular part of the school curricula. With over ninety-five publications, Dr. Trebi-Ollennu is a highly accomplished engineer who has changed the field of STEM on an astronomical level, which has earned him several awards such as the IEEE Region 6 Outstanding Engineer Award in 2007, the 2010 Specialist Silver Award from the Royal Aeronautical Society, and the 21st Century Trailblazer Award in Systems Engineering from the U.S.A. National Society of Black Engineers.

T-Pain, born Faheem Rasheed Najm, is not only a musician but an entrepreneur. Like many of his contemporaries such as Jay-Z, Akon, and Rihanna, he has an interest in multiple businesses. He first got into music as a child when he spent time with a music producer friend.

He would later convert his bedroom into a makeshift music studio. In the early 2000s, he made a grand entry into the music industry with a collaboration with Akon. He later released his debut album, Rappa Ternt Sanga, in late 2005 which became an instant hit globally.

Since then, he has featured major artists such as Chris Brown, Flo Rida, and DJ Khaled as well as winning the Grammys twice with his collaboration with Jamie Foxx and controversial rapper Kanye West.

His success in the music industry brought in quite a lot of money. In his own words, he became wealthy. However, a series of bad spending habits and investment decisions left him with zero dollars in the bank.

In a startling interview recently, the 35-year-old revealed that he had to borrow money from friends to treat his children to a Burger King meal. According to him, he once had $40 million in his account but lost all due to poor investment decisions and spending habits.

“Now I know what the high end is and what the low end is,” he said. “I’ve been mega-rich, I’ve been super broke, right in the middle of thinking I was mega-rich, and then got rich again, and you know learned how to really give a s— about money,” the rapper said in an interview with the radio show “The Breakfast Club.”

T-Pain disclosed that his most expensive purchase, apart from his home, was a $1.2 million Bugatti. That Bugatti, which he even abandoned after five months due to a fault, was the beginning of his financial woes. “At that point, I was running out of money and my accountant was like ‘You just bought a Bugatti. You’re out of money.’ And I was like ‘No, I’m not. I got this house I want to get, this other house for my assistants, my runners, my producers and stuff,’” T-Pain shared.

He said that after buying that house, he just started “going crazy with the money.” 

“I wasn’t paying attention to it. I thought if I didn’t have access to my own accounts that I wouldn’t have to look at it.”

Essentially, T-Pain and his team squandered money on real estate. “I was letting my manager do it and he was way more optimistic than I was,” the rapper said. “He would buy complete dumps and think that we could just paint.”

T-Pain shared that they never sold the properties purchased and things got really bad.

However, “The Masked Singer” singer claimed in the interview that he is currently financially stable, adding that he does not intend to chase after the $40 million. “Once you give as— about the money you’re making, then you feel much better about your accomplishments, you feel much better about what you’re doing, you start paying attention to your work that makes you money,” he said.

In addition, T-Pain said he has learned about sound financial management skills and paying attention to projects he is executing. He added that he has found a way to balance this time between his family and his hustles.

“I’m not chasing the $40 [million],” he said. “The money I’m making now, I’m just making it, I’m not trying to make it. That $40 million, I was hustling, I needed to be on everybody’s record, and every record gotta go No. 1, I gotta do this work. And at that time, I didn’t know my family at all.”

According to him, his proudest moment has been providing for his wife Amber Najm and three kids Lyriq, Muziq and Kaydnz.

“Awards are always great, but in the long run, it doesn’t really say who you are. I’m more concerned about my family, my kids, and my wife and making sure I can provide,” he said.

Colleagues of a Ghanaian medical student in Cuba who passed away on Friday say they believe his death “could have been prevented”.

Erasmus Klutse, a second-year student at the Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina (ELAM) in Cuba, died on May 7 in the Caribbean country’s capital, Havana, after joining his friends to play his most-liked sport, basketball.

Klutse was a medical student on Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) scholarship, and his colleagues say the harsh living conditions in Cuba led to his death.

The Ghanaian medical students in Cuba have since called on their government back home to come to their rescue, saying that the GNPC and the Ghana Scholarships Secretariat have delayed in sending their stipends for months now.

Eugene Oko Richman, a member of the National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS) executive committee in Cuba, said in an interview with Ghanaian media Class FM that Klutse lost his life because the Cuban government failed to send an ambulance during a medical emergency.

“Just this last Friday, we lost a student of ours, a brother, Erasmus Klutse and one of the reasons why we lost him was because of the poor health treatment that we’ve been receiving,” Richman said. “And the issue that we have is that the mission here has made it very easy for the Cubans not to make us a priority when it comes to our health because if they had sent an ambulance to him, we feel that his death could have been prevented.”

“So, that’s the reason why we are agitated and we are calling that there should be measures put in place to that things like this could be prevented”, he added.

A statement by the student body said Klutse “was a joy to all who knew him”. Stressing that his death was “preventable”, the statement outlined key issues that have reportedly been overlooked by the stakeholders in charge of the welfare of the Ghanaian students in Cuba.

Meanwhile, the GNPC Foundation says stipends to the medical students in Cuba have delayed because there is a disagreement over the mode of payment. It said students want to be paid cash in hand, which is against financial protocols.

The remains of Klutse will be flown back to Ghana after an autopsy is done.

Rosemond Brown sprang into Ghanaian and modest West African popularity about five years ago due to her signature rants on video which were posted on her social media accounts. These rants were usually highly charged criticisms of socialites and entertainers in her home country.

Brown, nicknamed Akuapem Poloo, had something to say about this actress’s fashion sense and that actor’s typecast roles. Occasionally, she spiced things up with sociopolitical critiques, echoing the pains and problems of Ghanaians. She was not well educated and you could tell from her command over the English language. But that too was a point of attraction – passable English anchored to volumes of confidence and a very deep awareness as to how social media works.

Soon enough, she was the guest on TV and radio programs, thus beginning her own life as a sort of minor Ghanaian celebrity. But she is currently known among some West African film fans as she has managed to transform herself into an actress in her own right.

In 2019, Grammy Award-winning-rapper Cardi B announced she was going to be in Ghana and Nigeria to perform two separate shows as well as spend a few days enjoying what both countries had to offer in December of that year. This West African tour was publicized by Cardi B herself as well as the promoters in West Africa. American entertainers are de facto global superstars and certainly, not even the high cost of tickets in the two lower-middle-income countries was going to stop the thousands who had planned to see the New York rapper.

The likes of CNN and the BBC did not even miss out on the content as Cardi B landed and spent a few days in Lagos, Nigeria’s second major city. She performed there in Nigerian on a Saturday night only to get on a plane some few hours later to head westwards to Ghana. It was the occasion of Ghana’s Year of Return and African-American and Hollywood celebrities were not in short supply in the country. Cardi B met up with fellow rapper T.I., among a host of others.

TV and radio entertainment reporters tried to secure an interview and were told that the rapper had planned a meet-and-greet at the plush Mövenpick Ambassador Hotel in Accra.

But when the time came for the said meet-and-greet, the rapper did not show up. She would later claim that her team had failed to inform her probably because she was also trying to have some rest before her event in Ghana. But that did not stop a Twitter storm in Ghana, fueled by other local celebrities who had been to the hotel to say hello to Cardi B.

Not every one of these disappointed celebrities was critical of the rapper. One of Cardi’s defenders was Akuapem Poloo who guessed that the rapper may have been too tired to meet with her fans. Poloo’s vociferous defense, much like when she went on the offense against others, was appreciated by Cardi B who invited the Ghanaian actress to spend a few hours at the hotel.

The two later posted on Instagram and Twitter, their time together and even started calling each other pet names like “bestie” and “twinny”. Poloo spent Cardi’s days after the event in Accra with her, going places and meeting people.

And so when in April 2021 Akuapem Poloo was sentenced to a 90-day prison sentence over a nude photo she publicized along with her son, Cardi weighed in. Poloo had been arrested in the middle of 2020 after the photo first came out. Those who made calls for her arrest, including child rights activists pointed to the fact that her son was a minor. Her defenders described as hypocritical the effort to jail her over a situation that was probably happening in many homes – children seeing their parents naked. The court agreed with the conservative public opinion.

Cardi tweeted: “I seen a lot of Americans do photoshoots like that .Even tho is not my style I don’t think she was going for sexual more going the natural idea. I think jail is a bit harsh .Maybe social media probation or community service.”

Ghana does not have penal options for community service. As at the time of going press, Akuapem Poloo was in a medium security prison.

Accra will be the site of Twitter’s Africa headquarters starting from 2021. This was contained in an announcement by the CEO of the global social media giant, Jack Dorsey, in a tweet on Monday morning.

“Twitter is now present on the continent. Thank you Ghana and @NAkufoAddo. #TwitterGhana”, Dorsey’s tweet read, thanking Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo.

Ghana’s president also welcomed Twitter, tweeting: “The choice of Ghana as HQ for Twitter’s Africa operations is EXCELLENT news. Gov’t and Ghanaians welcome very much this announcement and the confidence reposed in our country.”

For now, Twitter staff will be working remotely, a consequence of the convenience tech jobs provide in the COVID-19 pandemic. However, it is foreseeable that Twitter will establish a brick-and-mortar office even though the company has said it is committed to letting workers in other countries work permanently from home.

Why Ghana?

Twitter curtly explained why it chose Ghana:

As a champion for democracy, Ghana is a supporter of free speech, online freedom, and the Open Internet, of which Twitter is also an advocate. Furthermore, Ghana’s recent appointment to host The Secretariat of the African Continental Free Trade Area aligns with our overarching goal to establish a presence in the region that will support our efforts to improve and tailor our service across Africa. 

But this choice also follows working visits Dorsey took of Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa in 2019. It was rumored he was looking for where to establish Twitter’s first African office but that was never confirmed. Dorsey has however spoken of his belief that the next biggest questions in the automation economy, such as cryptocurrency, will be pertinent in Africa.

Twitter has revealed 12 hiring positions in Ghana, as at the time of going to press, including Senior Communications Manager, Senior Content Partnerships Manager and a Media Operations Analyst.

Geopolitics in Africa is largely couched in the policymaking spirit of the South-South cooperative ideology. It is a poor continent despite the potentials for wealth that can change the balance of power on the globe. Africans interact transnationally over this shared sense of overcoming the poverty and misery that afflict their people, as well as standing up to the bullishness of Euro-American dominance.

The said dominance goes back centuries ago to slavery and colonization. All but two African countries were colonized and sub-Sahara bore the worst brunt of this. There is also the problem of racism on the global scale by which Africans continue to suffer from badly-taught reasons for racial and ethnic differences. Overall, Africans are willing to support each other, especially in opposition to non-continent-based nations. Thus support may be slow and even lack financial benefits but it is there.

Transnational relationships among certain pairs of African countries can be described as frenemies. These are relationships that are friendly although either side recognizes long-standing tensions and the bases for these. Three of these frenemies have been described here.

Ghana and Nigeria

This is most probably the most notable frenemy situation on the African continent. It is virtually impossible to go anywhere on the continent where it is not known that Ghanaians and Nigerians have a kind of relationship that is part love and part hate. The two are most often rated as the biggest West African economies, two English-speaking countries and that in itself brings a competitive edge.

This competitiveness shows itself in sports – soccer being the most popular sport in either country – where the eagerness to bag bragging rights can get both tensed among athletes and fans. There is also the famous jollof rice battles where Ghanaians and Nigerians compete over who makes the best tasting version of that dish. Music and international trade are not spared this competitiveness too.

There is an often unexplored historical cause for this relationship with a theory suggesting that Ghana, as the first sub-Saharan country to win independence, became a sort of model figure for Nigerians. But as Nigeria grew in population and wealth, the relationship moved from mentor-mentee to a clash of who is bigger and better at whatever.

Rwanda and Burundi

Rwanda and Burundi have a decent relationship that is often maintained over the fact they share borders and ethnic groups. There are groups that can be found in both countries, a consequence of colonial demarcations so that ethnic groups did not form nations. The Hutu ethnic group, for instance, is the largest ethnic group in Rwanda and Burundi, contributing up to 80% of the populations in either country.

Nationalism or better, national loyalty, divides these people, however. An attack on the jet carrying Rwanda’s President Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundi’s President Cyprien Ntaryamira among others on April 6, 1994, sparked the violence that is the Rwandan genocide which resulted in the mass killing of over 800,000 people, most of them from the minority Tutsi ethnic group. The massacre happened in less than four months.

Burundians were not part of the war although Hutu and Tutsi people in that country chose sides. But in terms of their national loyalty, Burundians often remind themselves that their president was killed as result of Rwandan local politics. This reminder has been known to cause a fraught relationship at times.

Morocco and Algeria

Morocco and Algeria have the kind of relationship that has not necessarily gotten bad or violent but that is marked with resignation to stop trying to make it better. This relationship started well because Morocco was the most explicitly supportive regional friend Algerians had during the Algerian War of Independence against France. Morocco provided ammunition, money and a base to Algerian rebel forces.

But when Morocco decided to make Western Sahara a part of its kingdom, things went sour. Algeria perceived this move as an imperialist tactic on the part of Morocco to force submission from other Maghrebian nations. Algeria chose to support the Polisario Front, the pro-independence military movement in Western Sahara, against Morocco. Algiers has been supportive of Polisario for more than 30 years.

Morocco has also been accused of funding instability in Algeria, during the latter’s civil war. Morocco denies all of these accusations and has been unwilling to let go of Western Sahara. Both countries maintain an embassy in the other’s capital and sometimes cooperate against fundamentalist Islamic terrorism.

French billionaire Vincent Bolloré has been accused of shady deals and underhand dealings in the processes leading to his company’s control of Ghana’s largest port, the Tema Harbour.

In a special report, Pan African publication African-Confidential uncovered how Bolloré’s firm, Bolloré Africa Logistics, won the right to build and run a state-of-the-art container terminal at Ghana’s Tema port.

The report described the new container port of Tema as a “lifeline not only for Ghana but for landlocked Burkina Faso and Mali, through their 70% owned joint venture with the Ghana government, Meridian Port Services (MPS).”

The agreement, which was signed under the administration of then Ghanaian President John Mahama, became a subject of a ministerial investigation following his defeat in 2016 to President Nana Akufo-Addo, who secured a second term in December 2020.

The ministerial committee report said the French billionaire and his partners persuaded Mahama to award MPS a new container terminal contract in secret in breach of the country’s procurement laws.

It also said MPS overstated its planned investment which won tax holidays worth $832 million from Ghana’s parliament and that the agreement surreptitiously cut Ghana’s equity in MPS to 15% after first agreeing to 30%.

The committee’s report further claimed that Bolloré and his partners persuaded the government to allow it a monopoly on handling containers, “putting thousands of jobs at other port concerns at risk and driving up prices, and to set tariffs.”

The committee’s report also showed how Bolloré and his partners reduced the fees payable to the government over the life of the concession by $4.1 billion.

To this end, the committee concluded that the deal did not inure to the benefit of Ghana and recommended for a renegotiation which the Akufo-Addo administration ignored. 

“The terms of the agreements between MPS and the state are so tilted against Ghana’s interests, concluded the report, delivered to ministers in February 2018, they should be renegotiated immediately. Yet the much-criticized contracts are still unchanged,” Africa Confidential said.

Africa Confidential further reported that the history of those relations shows “serious ethical professional deficiencies” with the result that “the engagements have to be carefully and deliberately reviewed.”

The newsletter noted that President Akufo-Addo inherited the situation when he won the 2016 election and “instead of blaming the scandal on his predecessor he has chosen to leave the contracts as they stand while friends and officials of his New Patriotic Party (NPP) take up posts with MPS.”

According to Africa Confidential, although Akufo-Addo faced Mahama in December 2020’s general election, “the topic of the Tema deal did not come up in campaigning.”

“The two men appeared to observe a pact of silence on this and several other instances of alleged bad governance and corruption. Akufo-Addo narrowly won the election (AC Vol 61 No 25). This is the story of how the deal took shape, and how a fightback within the Transport Ministry and the NPP against the MPS deal was finally quashed, and the legendary ability of Vincent Bolloré to accommodate political change asserted itself,” it added.

Bolloré has been accused of running a port monopoly in West Africa as his firm is linked to managing 18 ports in the sub-region.

The report likened Bolloré’s concession of Ghana’s port to one he won in for his operations at the port of Lomé, Togo, in return for financing the re-election of the country’s president, Faure Gnassingbé, in 2010.

“On 26 February this year Bolloré and two of his fellow executives admitted, in a plea bargain, to bribing the Togolese president in exchange for favors at the port, and were fined €375,000 each. Bolloré’s company paid a €12 million fine (see Box, Bolloré – a monopoly in every port). The judge was so shocked by what they had done in Togo she rejected details of the plea bargain and ordered a trial of the executives,” the report added.

For Francis Akuamoah Boateng, there could be no better time in history than now to establish Ghana’s first solar panel factory. In international circles and the energy industry, there has been a consensus for a shift to solar energy as thermal and coal energies have not only proven to be costly but contribute to pollution.

Boateng’s solar factory, Solar Power Solutions (SPS), was constructed in 2016 at the cost of $50 million and produces all manner of solar electronics. Offering solar-powered solutions, it supplies and installs “off-grid and grid systems, photovoltaic systems and PV street lights.” The Ghanaian business mogul says his solar company was born out of his vision to light up the country as the nation could no longer depend on hydro and other gas plants for energy.

Born to a paramount chief in the Brong Ahafo region of Ghana, Boateng said he saw his dreams and opportunity to make it in life right in Ghana.

For him, traveling outside Ghana to seek greener pastures was not something he entertained. “I never thought of leaving Ghana, it was something out of the equation for me,” he said.

On why he decided to venture into solar energy, he recalled traveling to his hometown in the Bono region and nearly hitting someone at a checkpoint because the place was dark due to lack of streetlight. “So I said to myself, ‘why can’t we have lights around and then I remembered that the national grid cannot extend to those areas,’” he told vlogger Wode Maya.

“So the concept of solar energy came to mind and that is how I started.” He added that he was also driven by his passion to ensure the rural areas of Ghana have light, a basic social commodity in the 21st century.

Fortunately for Boateng, the Ghana Cocoa Board also came up with a similar concept to start introducing solar street lights in cocoa-growing areas and shea nut catchment areas in the north of Ghana.

Initially, Boateng imported his solar panels from China and other countries but with time, he decided that it was time to have them produced locally and produced in such a way that it is suitable for Africa.

SPS is now managed by Boateng’s son Ofori, who was raised in both Ghana and U.S. Ofori told Wode Maya that SPS’s solar panels are designed for Africa and made in Ghana. “We are trying to push [ourselves] into the arena of being one of the product developers within the electronics,” he said, adding that they seek to expand the factory to increase production capacity due to both local and international demands.

He indicated that the entire company’s capacity is 32 megawatts and will expand to hit 150 megawatts soon.

For young Africans outside the continent and other entrepreneurs, Boateng has a message for you: “Don’t give up.” According to him, hard work is a key ingredient to success in life. “And when you lay your hands on something you think you can do, just go all out,” he said.

Nigeria has its own established Premier League, but its love for the English Premier League is just indescribable. In Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, it’s not uncommon to see advertising billboards featuring Premier League stars or buses and walls of pubs beautifully adorned with club stickers. Apart from having their players in the League, locals would tell you that they follow the English Premier League because it’s the most competitive.

As a matter of fact, data show an estimated 276 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa watch the Premier League every year, bringing in financial benefits in the form of partnerships and replica shirts sold. In Nigeria, Arsenal is one of the most popular clubs. The London-based club enjoys a huge following in the West African country dating back to the days of Nwankwo Kanu, who joined the football club in 1999, and recent players like Alex Iwobi and Chuba Akpom.

It is therefore not surprising that almost every year for the past 15 years, thousands of Nigerians have come together to celebrate Arsenal Day, a two-day celebration of Arsenal football club. Arsenal fans from five local government areas in Nigeria’s Kogi state turn out in the town of Okene in south-central Nigeria annually for the event. They show up in their red and white Arsenal T-shirts with white jeans or trousers to sing, dance, eat and cheer. Banners and posters of players are hung on the walls as well.

“Our reason to start [Arsenal Day] is to celebrate Arsenal club and the players,” Ilyas Abdulsalam, director of Arsenal fans club Ebiraland which has more than 16,000 members, told CNN.

It is believed that Arsenal Day first began when two villages came together to celebrate the London club’s success in 2004, having reached the Champions League final. Others say the festival started following the opening of the Emirates Stadium in 2006. Though the Gunners haven’t won a Premier League trophy since 2004, fans in Nigeria still turn up in their numbers in Okene for the festival almost every year. There is no denying that these fans are expecting a trophy from the club. And although they are yet to get it, they are very patient and hopeful, they say.

With that optimism, Nigerian businessman and politician Orji Uzor Kalu last December revealed his desire to invest in Arsenal. The investment, he said, is inspired by his quest to help the club win more trophies, including the Champions League and the English Premier League. Kalu’s intention to buy shares in Arsenal made him the second Nigerian businessperson to express interest in investing in the club. Africa’s richest man Aliko Dangote recently showed serious interest in taking over the Gunners.

Today, even though Chelsea, Manchester United, Barcelona and Real Madrid fans in Nigeria do organize their own festivals, Arsenal Day seems to reign supreme.

Achimota School in Ghana, formerly known as Achimota College, was the school where Zimbabwe’s most iconic citizen, Robert Gabriel Mugabe, attended as a student-teacher to attain his certification to be able to work in newly independent Ghana.

But how many times can you say that Mugabe is arguably not even the biggest element in a given context, such as among alumni of a school? This is because Achimota’s alumni include none other than Kwame Nkrumah, Mugabe’s hero and an African political icon. Such is the pedigree of the school currently embattled over its refusal to admit to boys with dreadlocks.

The school’s authorities have said that the two students who had been placed there by a computerized placement system according to results from standardized nationwide exams, will not be admitted unless they shave off their hairs. Both sets of parents of the boys who identify as Rastafarians have committed to going to court for an interpretation of their religious liberties.

The alumni association of Achimota has however issued a strongly-worded letter to the current management of the school to stand by its rules and regulations. This alumni association which includes some of Ghana’s most prominent people is thought to be the reason an earlier Ghana Education Service (GES) directive to the school headmistress to admit the boys was reversed.

That suspicion may not be entirely unfounded. As much as Ghana possesses its own competitive Ivy League rankings of senior high schools, Achimota stands above so many due to heritage, and no annual rankings would change that. Alumni of Achimota has been known to channel millions of dollars into running the school, even though it is publicly funded.

The school was established in 1924 as Prince of Wales College and School through the initiative of a colonial governor of the Gold Coast, Gordon Guggisberg, the20th century African educationist James Kwegyir Aggrey and Rev Alec Garden Fraser, an English Anglican priest and schoolteacher.

It has undergone radical changes including renaming and the introduction of mixed-gender learning in its nearly 100 years of existence. In post-independent Ghana, Achimota, along with other schools founded by Christian missionaries prior to independence and right after, became the preferred institutions for bourgeois Ghanaians.

Most of these schools were founded as colleges but became senior high schools. They have continued to represent upper socioeconomic class, taste, and ambitions, meaning that it is common to see members from well-to-do backgrounds in Ghana attend these schools, mostly through alumni privileges. But since the computerized school placement system was introduced in 2005, many more Ghanaians from underprivileged, if not un-esteemed backgrounds are gaining access to schools previously reserved for the affluent and the connected.

Coupled with the introduction of free and compulsory senior high school education, many more Ghanaians are expected to breach what has been an enclave of wealth and power.

Achimota, for one, has produced more than its fair share of Ghana’s powerful people and continues to do so. The school was just one of many missionary-founded and colonial educational institutions established by the 1930s that now are the academies of prestige.

Jerry Rawlings, the former coup leader-turned-president was at Achimota. So were his two vice-presidents, Kow Nkessen Arkaah and John Evans Mills – who later became president. Mugabe was not the only non-Ghanaian former president who was at Achimota – Dawuda Jawara, the first head of state of Gambia, was too.

The father of Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo, Edward Akufo-Addo, schooled at Achimota. The older Akufo-Addo was also a president of Ghana. All of this is not counting for more the hundreds with diverse achievements in academia, politics, law, science, finance, and technology.