Educate Ethical and Innovative Leaders for Africa

Ashesi University in Ghana is committed to educating members of Africa's next generation of ethical, entrepreneurial leaders. Our alumni often go on to pursue projects with a profound impact on their communities, and many start to make their mark long before graduation. Members of the engineering department, which was inaugurated in 2015 thanks to donor support, are no different. 

In spite of its young age, Ashesi's engineering program is already producing research whose impact extends far beyond Ashesi’s campus. In fact, on November 8^th engineering professor Elena Rosca lead a team of eight Ashesi students to Boston to participate in the world's premier synthetic biology competition. This prestigious event, known as iGEM, had never before seen a team from Ghana participate, and Ashesi was one of only two teams from the African continent.

Team Ashesi's project centered on their development of a bacteria which can extract gold from soil and which will hopefully counteract the common and harmful practice in Ghana of using mercury for gold extraction. In spite of their lack of experience, and their competition against teams from some of the world's most prestigious institutions including Harvard, Oxford, and Cornell, Ashesi was awarded a silver medal for their work. You can read more here.

According to the iGEM team, they are driven by a desire to solve problems that impact their society, and this drive is apparent in their work. Thank you for supporting the next generation of ethical, entrepreneurial African engineers!