Bulls n Bears Entrepreneurship Zone :: A university for leadership: Patrick Awuah’s vision for Africa’s future

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Multimillionaire Patrick Awuah is a new generation of African entrepreneur
who has reversed the “African diaspora” back to his native land and, as
such, has disproved author Thomas Wolfe’s adage that you can’t go home
again. Awuah has, in fact, done so and has flourished in the process. So has
the university he came back to fund, found and accredit in his native Ghana
– Ashesi University in Accra.

In 2002, after living in the US for almost two decades, Patrick Awuah
returned to Ghana, leaving his job at global tech giant Microsoft where he
earned millions as program manager, to set up Ashesi, to educate young
Africans into the best possible educational mélange of science and liberal
arts.

When he made this major paradigm shift in his life, it came as a surprise
to everyone, not the least of whom was Patrick Awuah himself. By every
lifestyle metric, Awuah had all the reason in the world to stay right where
he was. In 1997, he was already 15 years into a longstanding lucrative job
with Microsoft where he’d made millions working as a program manager. When
he decided to take this leap of faith, the most supportive person of all was
his wife who saw in Patrick the burning desire to return to his African
homeland.

Originally, Patrick left his native Ghana in the early 1980s as a part of
the traditional cultural diaspora to Europe and the US, where college-age
African students come to their supra-society of choice, attain a degree from
a highly regarded university and stay on with a path to citizenship and a
lucrative career. His job at Microsoft, especially during the exponential
growth years of the 1990s paid huge dividends, and it would have been very
easy for him to stay right where he was and amass an even larger fortune.

But Patrick Awuah had always nurtured the idea of a private university in
Ghana, because he recognised the need for institutions of higher learning
especially in his homeland as something of paramount importance. To shore up
his own academic credentials, Patrick even went so far as going back to get
his masters degree at the University of California at Berkeley. But even
after he had gone that far into the pursuit of his dream, he would wake up
on more than one occasion, wondering if he’d done the right thing.

“And then I read the words of Goethe,” Patrick remembers: “ Whatever you
can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in
it – begin it now.’”

Begin he did, and in so doing, he found the gap – the critical path – that
created the opportunity. On his return to Ghana to begin his university
curriculum in 2002, Patrick Awuah found out that for every problem three
things kept coming up: corruption, weak institutions, and the people in
power who run them – the leaders.

Patrick asked two very important questions: Where were these leaders coming
from? What was it about Ghana that produces leaders that are unethical or
unable to solve problems?

In search of answers, he scanned the country’s educational system and
realised that nothing had changed during his time away.

“It was the same learning by rote, from primary school through graduate
school. Very little emphasis on ethics… and the typical graduate from a
university in Ghana has a stronger sense of entitlement than a sense of
responsibility. And that’s just wrong.”

Patrick’s resolve to address this problem resulted in the conception and
birth of Ashesi University, an institution launched specifically to help
develop young African leaders. Its very name, Ashesi, translates into the
term “Beginnings.” And it was to that standard that Patrick Awuah wanted
this unique collection of colleges to aspire.

As a part of its charter, the University has in place an honor code, where
the students pledge to be honest, attend their classes and operate their
course of study with the utmost integrity… and to hold each other
accountable. The students of Ashesi University take ownership of their
ethical posture on campus. Originally this was a radical departure from the
norm in most African universities where corrupt practices are often the
order of the day. And even many American universities, in today’s atmosphere
of entitlement, have dropped their honor code stipulations and have paid the
price in lowered student performance and expedient academic standards. Not
so at Ashesi.

“While the honor code may constitute a reach for a perfect society, which
is unachievable, we cannot achieve perfection,” Patrick observes. “But if we
reach for it, we can achieve excellence.’” (Awuah acknowledges that the
quote is actually a paraphrase from Hall of Fame football coach, Vince
Lombardi, but he doesn’t mind crediting others if it creates the desired
result. And in this case the result is a refurbished, more academically
sound, educated Ghanaian).

“Every society must be very intentional about educating its leaders… so
this is what I’m doing now.” When Awuah chartered Ashesi in 2002, it began
with two small buildings and 30 students. Today the university campus is set
on a bucolic 100-acre plot of land in a town called Berekuso, about a
one-hour drive from Accra itself.

As of 2016, the Berekuso campus has become something of a small college
showcase, with over 500 students partaking in a curriculum that is said to
be the perfect mélange of liberal arts and sciences.

Along with a strict academic curriculum, Ashesi also features a varied
programme of awards, athletic programmes (the APL, Ashesi Premier League
Soccer) and a special ASC event in the spring – now a 10-year tradition –
dedicating a week to building esprit de corps by helping students to
celebrate their own role in co-creating the synergy of Ashesi.

What Patrick Awuah wanted to initiate was an academically sound,
internationally accredited university in his native Ghana that would help
educate the country’s next generation of leaders… and to make it
“affordable”.

Originally, that took some doing, and it often required some healthy
investment and subsidy, not only from Patrick Awuah and his various funds,
but also from donors, investors and independent foundations – any outside
support that could come in without “strings” so often attached to
traditional funding.

“In our last freshman class, 50% of that class paid full tuition, 25% were
on full scholarships and 25% on partial scholarships,” Patrick notes. “The
reason why diversity is so important is that the most important conversation
on campus is a conversation about… the good society we would like to see in
Africa. That conversation is a lot more interesting if you have diversity in
the classroom.”

Looking ahead, Awuah says he hopes Africa’s universities will cultivate a
new generation of bold and innovative leaders, helping the continent to
transform itself. “If you come back in 30 years, universities will be
competing for the best and brightest students… I hope that universities will
also be competing on things such as whose students are the most ethical, the
most principled and the most visionary… If that happens, it will change the
continent.”

Averaging at about 71%, Ghana has only a fair literacy rate, right in the
middle of the 39 nations in the sub-Sahara. In view of that, or perhaps
because of it, it also has an underperforming track record at higher levels
of education. This is underscored by consistently disappointing performance
levels during advanced vocational courses called TVET (technical and
vocational education and training) that have been considered something of a
flop by the country’s 28% unemployed graduates. In truth, higher education
in Ghana – one that includes liberal arts – at the college level is
considered something of a rarity enjoyed by only the few who can afford it.
As Patrick Awuah observes: “In this country, only 5% of college-age kids go
to college… And that same 5% will invariably end up running the country… So
when I look at universities I see Africa fast-forward 30 years. When this
20-year-old is now in his or her fifties, that person is going to be a
leader. And so I felt that engaging how that future leadership core is
educated could be catalytic.”

Honored numerous times, and one of the most famous men in Ghana after
former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Patrick Awuah recently received the
MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Award for Education.

AFRICA ARRIVES approaches the continent of Africa with a realistic sense of
optimism and a forensic sense of history.  It provides a factual,
evidence-backed case for Africa’s potential for inward investment, potent
entrepreneurship and an anticipated fifty-year arc for exponential growth.—
Howwemadeitinafrica 

 



Patrick Awuah

 

 

Invest Wisely!

Bulls n Bears 

 

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