The joint university experiment, by pooling resources within the same sub-region and drawing on the different strengths of the three member colleges and their respective host countries, represents an early and instructive model of South-South cooperation. 

Prof Adu Boahen who joined his ancestors ten years ago, left a worthy legacy to all Ghanaians, especially with regard to what must concern them most – living in freedom as proud citizens; a people able to choose their own governments, and prepared to be unsparing and vocal in their critical evaluation of the performance of those governments, once elected.

The ruckus kicked up by Dr. Stella Nyanzi’s nude protest against Prof Mahmood Mamdani, director of Makerere Institute of Social Research, refuses to die down. Responding to an article by three fellow graduate students in support of Dr. Nyanzi published in last week’s issue of Pambazuka News, another student now offers a different take on the controversial academic and the situation at the institute.

Gone – maybe forever – are the days when thirst for knowledge to improve oneself and to contribute to a better society drove young people to seek higher education. These days university students and products of related institutions would only be able to perfectly reel off the names of rappers, footballers and DJs as well as post countless meaningless material on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and the like – with little understanding or interest in the realities of their society.

The project of genuinely decolonizing the university must be part of an inclusive task to transform the wider society of which the academy is an integral part. It is a long term undertaking which surely starts with the audacity to name the elephant in the room: white supremacy.