Following the successful launch of the Ghana Alumni group last June a second event hosted by Lynne Brydon from the Centre of West African Studies was held in at the Golden Tulip Hotel in Accra in November. Lynne talked briefly about the re-launch of the Centre and the Africa Hub following a review of CWAS earlier in the year, and about the work of CWAS over the years (it celebrates its Golden Jubilee in 2013). The gathering, at the start of a holiday weekend, was very lively, primarily because of the presence of two of the earliest alumni, Dr Yaw Asirifi (Medicine) and Dr Laetitia Obeng (Zoology), who came to Birmingham in 1948. They really entertained the younger alumni with their tales, both of life in Birmingham in the early 1950s and their very eminent subsequent careers in Ghana.

Other alumni joining in the merriment were from the College of Social Sciences (ID the Business School and Economics) and also those who had taken the Tropical Highways Master’s programme. CWAS alumna Dr Rose Mensah Kutin was also on hand along with Dr Kwame Kwarteng (CWAS) and Dr Owusu Boampong (IDD) who braved the holiday traffic and travelled up from Cape Coast.

At the June meeting the group discussed ways in which established alumni might help returning Ghanaian graduates with internships and, perhaps, training opportunities, but we need to work out which Ghanaians are returning to Ghana in any year to be able to make this kind of scheme work in practice.

Thanks are due to everyone who was there, and to those who left determined to make the Ghana Birmingham Alumni group work in practice as well as in theory. And you’ll all see a much enhanced and visible presence of Birmingham, at least in Accra, with your new bumper stickers!

Photos of group meetings