Professor Kwesi Yankah

Professor Kwesi Yankah

Professor Kwesi Yankah is a distinguished Ghanaian academic, linguist, and public intellectual renowned for his contributions to African humanities and education. He has held significant academic leadership roles, including serving as Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana and Vice Chancellor of Central University. His expertise spans African linguistics, oral traditions, and communication, with a focus on Akan royal oratory and the role of proverbs in rhetoric. In recognition of his extensive contributions, he was appointed Emeritus Professor at Ashesi University in 2024

Professor Yankah is the author of several influential works. His notable books include Speaking for the Chief, which won the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences Gold Book Award, and The Proverb in the Context of Akan Rhetoric, recipient of the Ghana Book Award. In 2021, he published Beyond the Political Spider: Critical Issues in African Humanities, a collection of essays examining challenges in African academia. His memoir, The Pen at Risk: Spilling My Little Beans (2023), reflects on his experiences as a columnist during Ghana's military regimes. Additionally, he co-edited African Folklore: An Encyclopedia and has been recognized as a fellow by the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Folklore Society

  • Edmond

    Very few people leave profound trails for a younger generation to find, and even fewer people dare to make their legacy meaningful and brazenly impactful. Throughout his life and through his work, Kwesi Yankah has pushed himself to do just that. I was much younger when Kwesi Yankah, a writer and social commentator, eloquently used satire and wit to articulate some of the most pressing issues in Ghanaian and African society. It was thought-provoking philosophy, critical art, and rousing commentary cleverly woven into a beautiful tapestry of brilliance. Many years later, I understood, even more, the wisdom in his words that captured our history, culture, and politics in profound ways. For Kwesi Yankah, if there ever were important landmarks in his life’s work, they would be a genuine honesty in diction, simplicity in his critique, and unusual calmness in his worldview. For people like me who watched him from a distance for many years, it is refreshing to see how much curiosity pushed Professor Kwesi Yankah to ask difficult questions of himself, and of his world. As a man with an affection for his culture and country, his work remained authentic even as he challenged other minds. As a researcher and sociologist, I have been particularly inspired by Professor Kwesi Yankah’s unique appreciation for the intersection of philosophy and reality. My own work in organizational change and leadership has been enriched by his tireless pursuit in academia, insights through governance, and excellence as a man who is just as determined as he is kind. Decades after some of his writings stirred social and political thought in Ghana, it is humbling to see how much contemporary society resembles the world that a much younger Kwesi Yankah envisioned. For a visionary who brought curiosity to leadership, governance, and service, it is especially humbling to see his fingerprints on some of the most defining educational policies across Ghana. Through the years, I have been fortunate to be able to lean on his intellect, as a man who paints a world with words in a way that resonates with many beyond our African continent. Most importantly, I am fortunate to call Professor Kwesi Yankah my friend.

    - Dr E. Obeng Amoako Edmonds

  • Crowning Him – Kwatriot

    Inaugural lectures at the University of Ghana are always well attended. When the new (full) professor is someone, like Kwesi Yankah, who is also a well-known writer, the Auditorium of the School of Administration proves inadequate for the audience. Happily, the air-conditioning still works very well, having been refixed. Students and faculty members rush for seats. Like a grand festival everybody, the chief’s elders and ordinary folk alike, jostles for seats closer to the centre. Latecomers might find little room by the walls or perch on the steps in the aisles. Of course, late coming distinguished persons such as former vice-chancellors or retired professors aren’t made to stand; extra chairs are brought in and space is made for them close to the platform. People also distinguished simply for heir nearness to political authority are given same reception. For academia is seriously class conscious, incredibly hierarchy conscious and motivated. The inaugural itself, the apogee of an academic’s career, is testimony. The difference here, however, is that to get close to where Kwesi Yankah stood last week demands sweat which everybody respects, except politicians in Africa who hate their societies and have sold out for, as was usually expressed in past polemics, “a mess of potage”. So, the first two rows of seats in the auditorium are reserved: for council members, top administrators of an increasingly unadministrable system, serving and retired professors who are united by as vice-chancellor Addae Mensah said – “poverty”, former vice-chancellors and registrars, and other distinguished citizens. Special space is also made for politicians and civil servants.

    Old lady
    People go to the inaugural who cherish education. Kwesi didn’t invite his old lady because he wondered if his mother would have found meaning for an “inaugural” at all. I bet she would have enjoyed it: she would have been proud. She would have felt happy about those days she would spank Kwesi out of any thoughts of truancy and trot him to school. The big question for her would have been why her proud son was donned in a choirmaster’s robes but no one was singing or praying. Those who go to an inaugural have, or are supposed to have faith in the leadership role of scholarship, of scientific inquiry, of higher learning in a nation’s movement forward, in a people’s search for light, for enlightenment, for civilization, indeed for economic progress. Anybody who goes to the inaugural lecture would seem to be somebody who respects learning. This is an occasion which must rekindle hope in the possibilities and strengths of our own institutions of higher learning. So, it seemed quite right for Dr. Amoako Nuamah, Minister of Education, to be there. And she did, properly like everybody there, enjoy herself fully. After all, as Prof. Addae Mensah thought aloud, if Christine Amoako Nuamah had remained at Legon she would have herself given, or be quite close to giving, an inaugural lecture. Her hard work and scholarship as a scientist must not be doubted in the least. In fact the university is the loser by her absence. Maybe sadly though the university is the loser also for her (dis)appointment as minister of education.

    Ministers’ presence
    Minister of Information Spio Garbrah was also there, and looked every bit like enjoying Kwesi Yankah’s treatise on free speech in traditional society. Why not? Even boxers, people who generally come from backgrounds farthest removed from the quaint environs of academia, hold scholarship in awe. That is why Azumah Nelson, when he realised he had attained the zenith of his craft, declared: “nobody call you professor for naughting,” and adopted the title. Deep down, really, even those politicians who express such violent disdain for academics or intellectuals do so simply as a cowardly act. They lack the courage and discipline required for long hours of reading and studying, and the humility to bow to the achievements of the mind and to accept that they do not and cannot know everything, and that they must find out, ask questions and be questioned. Both ministers must have been there because they are alumni of the university. Or, for Amoako Nuamah, in her portfolio she was as usual an invited guest. Spio too was invited or came – also because, I suspect, in his office he should be interested in the topic and the professor’s analysis of the question. The direction of his interest in “free speech” I cannot be too clear about. The ministers present could have attended, hopefully, for their interest in and respect for higher learning. Otherwise they could not comfortably fit in there, and this is the worry.

    Education minister and Gen Quainoo graced the occasion
    It is inconceivable to be a minister in this government – a government which has done education the worst blows in our post-colonial history; a government which is dismantling higher education by the day to please the IMF/World Bank; a government consciously withdrawing state interest and responsibility in education; a government mocking education by the day; one with a mission to undo any progress made in education – and at the same time enjoy with abandon an important celebration of the achievements of higher education.

    Irreconcilable Facts
    It is difficult to reconcile this. How can a Minister of Education enjoy a university festival when her President, by the worst example of double-standards, shows by deeds his utmost disregard for higher education in his own country by sending his daughter to a university elsewhere? How does a minister of education defend higher education under her tenure in such circumstances? Amoako Nuamah, meanwhile, got away with it. And Spio Garbrah must have thought his public relations gimmicks – which Kabral calls “misinformation” – are getting somewhere. One thought university education would imbue in students, in young people a rebellious spirit to question, to scoff at deeds and representatives of policies that demean the future of the youth. One thought that, as Rawlings used to urge before he got comfortable and consolidated and forgot the slogans he himself used to so hoarsely shout, our students would stand up to a minister who represents the very uncertainty of their today and misdirection of their futures. End

    Prof Kwame Karikari

Mentors

  • Prof. Florence Abena Dolphyne

  • Mr. Kojo Yankah

  • Mr. Ebo Daniel

  • Prof. Max Assimeng