After a long search and a challenging decision-making process, Ashesi has identified what will likely be the site of its future campus. Berekuso (pronounced bray-koo-soo) is located on a mountain ridge running northwest of Accra, Ghana's capital. The hilltop site, which is approximately 40 minutes away from downtown Accra, features lush green landscape and impressive views of Accra and its neighboring city of Tema.
Berekuso is home to a farming village of approximately 5,000 people. The local chief, Nana Oteng-Korankye II, is a strong proponent of education and considers the location of Ashesi University in his region as a wonderful opportunity to develop his village, help his people economically and raise awareness of Berekuso throughout Ghana. In fact, as we contemplated our campus location options, the potential impact that Ashesi could have on this community presented a compelling advantage to locating in Berekuso.
Other factors that had to be considered were cost, proximity to Accra, availability of infrastructure such as water and road access, and legal status of the land. The land search began last year and accelerated in April when we hired an attorney and land economist to help us assess land values, perform title searches and zoning checks, and evaluate infrastructure such as water, electricity and telephones at each site. The process of evaluating and buying land in a country with ambiguous land laws and spotty infrastructure presented us with our greatest challenge to date. There is still much due diligence work and negotiating that needs to take place before we finalize a long-term lease on the land, but we are very excited to be this much closer to establishing a significant presence in Ghana.