# Nana Aba Appiah Amfo

Nana Aba Appiah Amfo (born 30 September 1971) is a Ghanaian linguist, university administrator and the current Vice-chancellor at the University of Ghana. Until her appointment, she was the Pro Vice-Chancellor for Academic and Students Affairs at the University of Ghana in West Africa.

## Quotes

* It’s a combination of hard work, identifying opportunities and taking advantage of those opportunities, and some favour from God that makes great.
** Appiah Amfo in a question and answer interview
Prof. Appiah Amfo talks on rote learning not helpful
* students must be challenged to focus on critical thinking and analytical skills since rote learning has not been helpful, there is the need to create avenues for students to explore their creative sides, music and dance.
* We should be less focused on assessing students based on memory, and more on application. For that to happen, we need to focus on teacher training, incentivise our brightest students to go into teaching and keep small class sizes to allow for more interaction.
* Lifelong learning must not be confined to the classroom or to any age in life as life is dynamic; and the day you stop learning, you become intellectually dead and cease to be relevant to your society.
* If anyone wants to make a mark in life, then there was the need to invest in one’s personal development. Spend time and effort developing yourself. Jesus private prayer life was the key to His robust public ministry.
* Be unfazed by obstacles. Obstacles are going to come on your journey, but be unfazed. Like me, you are bound to have setbacks and rejection, but don’t back down. Without a resilient spirit, you’re bound to give up when you’re ultimately meant for the top.
* You can’t do everything by yourself. Be on the lookout for talent; know the wide array of skills and strengths of your team and harness them for your benefit.
* Give people the opportunity to prove themselves, but assign key roles to trusted people. Stakeholder engagement is really key and you cannot succeed as a leader without it.
* Because I do believe I’m not the only one who works the hardest – yes, I do work hard, but it’s also important to take advantage of opportunities as they come, because they prepare you for positions ahead.
* My parents were teachers, they put a premium on education and they did not discriminate as far as their daughters or sons were concerned. They gave me the opportunity to get educated to the highest level that I so desired. They brought me up to believe that I can do anything that I wanted to – anything that my brothers could do, I could also do.
* Coming to this position, I intend to drive the growth of this university through technology and humanism. The past two years has taught us we all need to take technology very seriously and we’ve had experiences of what we can use technology for. In every aspect of the university’s operations – from research management to teaching and learning, to administrative processes, to student management – I intend that technology drives this. But we should not forget that we’re there for the humans … the university exists for the good of the larger society.
* Men have dominated our boardrooms, men have dominated academia. Here in my university, the proportion of women academics, that’s just about 30 per cent. And as you can imagine, the higher you go up the ranks, the fewer women that you find. But, I must say, that it’s a good time at my university, I am the first female vice-chancellor. For the first time too, we have a female chancellor, we also have a female council chair for the first time. It is a source of encouragement to many females out there, but also for males – they dream for themselves, they dream for their wives, their daughters, their sisters.
* Pragmatics specifically looks at language use in context. For you to be able to make meaning out of what we say, you almost always need the context. Sometimes you need the history, the religion, the culture, you need the philosophy and so on.
* For example, if you have a scientific innovation, which is expected to help farmers increase their yield, how is it that you communicate to that group of farmers who don’t have so much education, such that they appreciate that scientific innovation and how it can enhance their yield?
* Absolutely, both need mentoring and I have mentored both men and women in my career. What I seek to do is to support women to come out of their shells, to support women to overcome the barriers that prevent them from achieving their highest potential. That’s why I think that women need special attention – we have so much great potential, but there are so many things that encumber us in society, our gender roles, what society expects of us. These tend to hinder us from being professionally excellent.
* Understand the authority you have; but keep your head low because positions don’t last forever. It’s not really about you, it’s about your office. If you don’t build networks and lifelong relationships, you could be very lonely at the end of your tenure.
* That is to say they must keep in touch with what was going on across the world but engage it based on the local context of the country’s population, literacy levels, access to technologies and its (country’s) priorities.
* In my induction speech, I clearly stated that my goal as Vice-Chancellor would be to train students who are critical thinkers, technologically adept, humane, culturally sensitive and ready to provide leadership for the nation and continent.
* Education was at the heart of national development and higher education was at the apex and that this conversation is critical because we have to periodically examine how we deliver this all-important mandate.
* I always wanted to be a professor at the very top. It’s not your teacher, mentor, boss or parent’s responsibility.
* The two concepts driving my tenure are technology and humanism. We need to incorporate technology in our teaching and learning in small and big ways.
* I launched the Vice-Chancellor’s Programme for Classroom Modernisation and Learning Experience, One-Student; One-Laptop, and our hotspot comfort zone as part of the technology and humanity focus.
* From the beginning it wasn’t something I had my eyes on but as I built my academic career, as I developed my administrative competencies, and with the inputs and support of others I worked with, at some point I convinced myself that when the position is vacant I will give it a shot.
* I will say I have been blessed in many ways as I started my family life before my career. I started my Master’s when my first child was four months old so while I was studying, I was raising him. And this was out of Ghana so I didn’t have my mother or auntie to support me in raising him, which made it difficult. While I was doing my Master’s I had my second child.
** I planned everything, including my menu. Anytime you enter my kitchen you will see a menu indicating all our meals throughout the week and that helps if someone had to take over when I had to travel for work. Even for people who have helped me at home over the years, I always had a schedule for what they had to do each day. I must add that I was blessed with the right mentors. My Master’s supervisor, Prof. Thorstein Fretheim of Norwegian University of Science and Technology, taught me how to be an academic. Directly and indirectly, he guided me on how to succeed in this field. Guidance is also very important.

## External links

* Authority control: WorldCat search