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 achievement and the enhanced status that graduation confers. They also try to give the ceremony an individual flavor that is unique in the world of the Academy. Nowhere is this achieved better than at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi, Ghana, the capital of the ancient 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 close 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 by the open sides that not only allow a larger audience to experience the event, but also 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, high-level academics and invited personalities, and an extensive high gallery that surrounds it provides seats for the university choir and the huge 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 hall. 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 academic robes from every continent. In a solemn procession, he makes his way through a band of energized traditional drummers who predict the arrival of this tsunami of knowledge to the waiting gathering. Entering the hall, the academic parade is triumphantly heralded by great horns whose low, sonorous blasts echo through 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 the freedom of Ghana. After the introductory addresses, the awarding of degrees to graduates follows the universal pattern except for two distinguishing features. Ghana is said to have some sixty vernacular languages, each with its characteristic tribal and clan names. This presents the University Registrar with an almost impossible task of pronouncing all the names correctly when the recipients are called to receive their certificates, but their mistakes are quietly forgiven by an appreciative and respectful audience.
In the graduate parade, each individual is greeted with generous applause as they bow to their dean and receive their award. All the young men wear a smart western suit and tie in a boring uniform that can be seen all over the world, but the women take advantage of the event to put on a dazzling fashion show. Many of the dresses showcase the latest innovations using brightly colored traditional Kente narrow loom cloth woven a few miles north of Kumasi in the villages around Bonwire. Notable achievements are greeted with additional gasps and applause, though some displays are marred by lurching ungainly on heels that are too high.
As the tropical sun descends behind the University Library, the National Anthem is sung with great relish by a proud assembly ready to disperse into individual family celebrations. A degree from Kumasi may not yet have earned the accolades 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.
