Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama will visit KSU Monday, Sept. 30, making him the first sitting head of state to visit the university.
Mahama will present a lecture in the Bailey Performance Center at 11 a.m. focusing on the economic and governmental developments of his country followed by a question and answer session with the audience. Prior to his arrival to Atlanta, President Mahama will be speaking at the United Nations Assembly in New York City.
According to a KSU news release, while in Atlanta, President Mahama will meet with local and state officials, visit the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, tour the KSU campus and meet with the Ghanaian Diaspora community in Atlanta.
Last year’s “Year of Ghana” lecture series, executed by Sam Abaidoo and Dan Paracka, led to President Mahama’s acceptance of the invitation to visit KSU.
Director of Academic Initiatives Dan Paracka said the “Year of”lecture series has been going on for 30 years at KSU.
“As part of it, we had a conference, the theme of the conference being Ghana: a model of democratic governance, economic growth and sustainable development,” Paracka said. “[President Mahama] is going to give a lecture centered on that theme.”
Charles Amlaner, KSU’s vice president for research, participated in the group of colleagues that visited President Mahama last July to extend the invitation. Amlaner said The visit was the result of many years of hard work from KSU officials, especially the members of KSU’s Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Team. These officials visited the Ghanaian Embassy in Washington D.C. several times.
“The fact that President Mahama accepted President Papp’s invitation is largely due to the high esteem that many in Ghana hold for the stature of education at KSU,” said Amlaner in an email.
KSU President Daniel Papp said he is excited for Mahama’s visit.
“This is the first time we’ve had a sitting head of state visit Kennesaw State,” said Papp. “It raises our visibility.”
Although the “Year of Ghana” lecture series is over, Papp said he believes this event enriches the programs that took place over the past year. “It’ll be a real feather in the cap for the university.” said Papp.
President Mahama is a career politician who comes from an avid political background. At the University of Ghana, President Mahama received a bachelor’s degree in history in 1981 before attending post graduate school at the University of Ghana where he studied communication until 1986. Mahama also received a post graduate diploma in social psychology from the Institute of Social Sciences in Moscow.
After writing his memoir “My First Coup D’etat and Other True Stories From the Lost Decades of Africa,” he returned to Ghana and became the Information, Culture and Research Officer at the Embassy of Japan in Accra. Mahama was elected to the Parliament for the Bole- Bamboi Constituency in 1996, 2002 and 2004 and became the vice presidential candidate for the National Democratic Congress in 2008. The former president, John Evans Atta Mills, passed away July 24, 2012, and Mahama was sworn into office Jan. 7, 2013.
