Ghana Life: Graduation at KNUST
Everyone remembers their graduation ceremony and for many it is one of the most important milestones in their lives. Universities around the world go to great lengths to ensure that the ceremony reflects this importance and provides their alumni with an experience that fully reflects their pride in their academic achievements and the enhanced status conferred by graduation. They also try to give the ceremony an individual flavor that is unique in the world of the Academy. Nowhere is this better accomplished than at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi, Ghana, the capital of the former Ashanti Kingdom with its rich cultural heritage.
The ceremony takes place in the university’s Great Hall, built in the 1960s by Kwame Nkrumah’s great friend, Vice-Chancellor Dr. RP Baffour, specifically to provide a stunning venue for the all-important annual celebration. During the ceremony, the large size of the room is further expanded with open sides that not only allow a larger audience to experience the event, but connect the ceremony with the surrounding natural environment of extensive gardens, flowering shrubs and trees. powerful of the vestigial tropical forest. A conventional platform provides accommodation for university officials, senior academics and invited personalities, and an extensive tall gallery surrounding it provides seats for the university choir and the massive Ashanti horns that give the ceremony one of its unique cultural characteristics.
The ceremony begins with the assembly of parents, relatives and friends of the graduates in the main body of the room. The gathering of personalities on the platform often includes the President of the Republic and/or the Asantehene, King of Ashanti, who for some years served as President of the University Council. Professors and lecturers in their brightly colored robes gather in the University Library, separated from the Great Hall by a hundred meters of lawn. This kaleidoscopic display is often enhanced by scholarly robes from every continent. In a solemn procession, he makes his way through a band of energized traditional drummers who foretell the coming of this tsunami of knowledge to the expectant gathering. Entering the hall, the academic parade is triumphantly heralded by the great horns whose low, resonant blasts echo through the stone and concrete and pump adrenaline into every human chest.
Led by the choir, the assembly sings the university anthem praising the ancestors who fought for Ghana’s freedom. After the introductory speeches, the awarding of degrees to graduates follows the universal pattern except for two distinctive features. Ghana is said to have some sixty vernacular languages, each with its characteristic tribal and clan names. This presents the University Registrar with a nearly impossible task of pronouncing all the names correctly when the recipients are called to receive their certificates, but their mistakes are quietly forgiven by a grateful and respectful audience.
In the graduating parade, each individual is greeted with hearty applause as they bow to their dean and receive their award. All the youngsters wear a fancy western suit and tie in a boring uniformity that can be seen the world over, but the women take advantage of the event to put on a dazzling fashion show. Many of the dresses showcase the latest innovations in brightly colored traditional Kente narrow loom cloth woven a few miles north of Kumasi in the villages around Bonwire. The most notable achievements are greeted with gasps and extra applause, though some exhibits are marred by ungainly swaying on too-high heels.
As the tropical sun sets behind the University Library, the National Anthem is sung with great gusto by a proud assembly ready to disperse into individual family celebrations. A Kumasi degree may not yet have earned the praise of Oxford or Harvard, but universities around the world could learn something from KNUST by shaping their graduation ceremonies to reflect the traditional culture of their people.
