Education Ghana Project #13214

Educate Ethical and Innovative Leaders for Africa

by Ashesi University Foundation

Educate Ethical and Innovative Leaders for Africa

Project Report | Aug 31, 2016
Engineering students craft solar generator models

By Natalie Davis | Program Assistant

In the fall of 2015, Ashesi launched its Engineering program with a pioneering cohort of 55 students, 40% of whom are women. Ashesi’s Engineering Program is designed to train ethical, responsible engineers with strong problem-solving skills that can see through challenges and find solutions within a local context. Additionally, “we believe in making sure that future engineering solutions to Africa’s problems gain from the perspectives of women,” explains Ashesi President and Founder Patrick Awuah.

As a culmination of their six-week long “Introduction to Engineering” class, our first-year Engineering students were given two weeks to design and build a working prototype of a solar-powered mini-generator. Students took on the project against the backdrop of power supply challenges in Ghana’s capital city of Accra. The generator prototypes they built could charge a range of devices, from mobile phones to laptops.

The project was a chance for students to explore the different tools and equipment they will be using for their work throughout their next three years in the Engineering program. These facilities were made possible thanks to the generous support of donors from around the globe.

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Jun 8, 2016
Freshman Design Thinking Course Sparks Startups

By Amy Barbour | Communications Officer

Over the past year, Ashesi’s campus has grown into a hotbed for startups. There’s a late-night food delivery service, an out-of-school education program, a social enterprise aimed at helping children with neurological disorders, and over ten other startups created by freshmen as part of their Foundations for Design and Entrepreneurship (FDE) class. The new year-long course equips students to use design thinking to solve problems, and then create businesses out of those solutions. In the first semester, students strengthen their problem solving and critical thinking skills. In the second semester, they conceptualize and launch their own startups.

“For developing new ideas, we take students through the design thinking process where we teach them to take a system’s perspective to problems (a bird’s eye view); to not resort to their biases but rather be user-centered in tackling problems so they can develop solutions from deep empathy; and to aim for creative and unique outputs” explains FDE Professor Gordon Adomdza. “For applying their ideas, we teach students to test, test, test, until they get it right. Student teams have developed a non-electric hair drying head wrap, an activated charcoal product to reduce odor in the fridge, and a social platform to engage junior high school students. Reading through their reflection papers after just one semester, it was clear that the process of slowing down and taking a system’s perspective to problems was beginning to change the perspectives of many students. Our colleagues teaching other classes have shared their observations of how refreshingly different this current class of students is. We have developed a nice invention, but we need to continue making creative adaptations, in order to sustain these efforts at innovation.”

Through the entrepreneurial journey students take, Professor Adomdza hopes that the course will inspire a lifelong passion for entrepreneurism in many students. Assistant Professor Sena Agyepong envisions that FDE will have an impact far beyond the Ashesi campus. “We expect to see more collaboration between students from different majors, launching ventures that will start some very impactful change in the country and across the continent. And we think FDE is a very useful tool to get them started.”

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Mar 15, 2016
Ghana Climate Innovation Center at Ashesi

By Amy Barbour | Communications Officer

The World Bank Group recently announced the upcoming launch of a new Climate Innovation Center (CIC) at Ashesi University to support Ghana’s green growth strategy. Financed by a US$17.2M grant from the World Bank, the CIC will be a green project incubation hub where entrepreneurs and businesses can access support to develop their innovative ideas into strong and viable businesses.

The center will help over 100 local clean technology companies develop and scale innovative solutions to climate change, and enable over 300,000 Ghanaians to increase resilience to climate change in the next ten years.

The grant agreement was signed by Henry Kerali, World Bank Country Director for Ghana, and Patrick Awuah, Founder and President of Ashesi University.

“The Ghana CIC solidifies the role of the private sector in helping Ghana mitigate and adapt to climate change,” said Henry. “By enabling entrepreneurs and green innovators to test and scale their business models, homegrown clean technology solutions can help the country build climate resilience, while also creating jobs and fostering economic growth.”

“I want to express gratitude to the World Bank, our consortium partners and the Ministry for working with us to get this project off the ground,” said Patrick. “As we launch into Engineering at Ashesi married with what we already do in business and entrepreneurship, the Ghana CIC is going to provide a really strong base for us to focus our attention on issues to do with adaptation to climate change.”

Ashesi University Foundation has committed to raise an additional $2.5M to build a permanent CIC facility on Ashesi's campus. Ashesi is eager to be a key partner in this project, and we hope our global community will join us to make this center a reality.

For more information on the center, please visit www.infodev.org/climate.

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