Las month, Ashesi Founder & President Patrick Awuah attended the 2016 American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting in Washington DC. The conference brings together thousands of scientists, engineers, policymakers, educators, and journalists to discuss recent developments in science and technology.
This year’s theme—Global Science Engagement—focused on how science can meet global challenges in need of innovation and international collaboration. For his part, Patrick spoke about how Ashesi is transforming Africa through science and technology education.
In a post-conference interview with international broadcaster DW, Patrick shared how Ashesi graduates have already achieved a lot in these areas: “One of the graduates works in the banking industries and has deployed IT systems that have greatly improved the efficiency of banks. Others have built and deployed biometric registry systems so that our election process is more secure.”
Another alumna, Araba Amuasi ’07, now serves as Chief Operations Officer of Village of Hope Orphanage, to which a school is attached. She has introduced computer programming in the school’s curriculum, inspired after her own experience as a computer science major at Ashesi.
“I am very proud of that because it is not the path, we thought she was going to go – given her strength, she could have gone to work in any company, she could have started her own company – but she is using science in a very interesting way, and she is changing lives.”