Crafting a 21st century undergraduate engineering programme for Sub-Saharan Africa

Ashesi University College in Ghana, West Africa is a young, private, not-for-profit, undergraduate university that is providing a critical-thinking based broad education to its pan-African student body. Ashesi will launch an engineering programme in the coming year, and has taken the opportunity to design a 21st century engineering programme appropriate to the developing world context. Recent information on engineering education best practices was incorporated into the programme, and various stakeholders were involved at multiple stages throughout the process. The new engineering programme maintains Ashesi's emphasis on ethics, leadership, and civic engagement, while adding the mathematics, sciences, and engineering subjects necessary to the discipline. Engineering-specific courses will combine theoretical topics with practical labs and frequent projects. In addition, Ashesi engineering students will undertake a year-long community-engaged service learning group project in their third year, and a year-long capstone project in their final year. This paper details the development process of Ashesi's unique engineering programme, and provides a summary of this curriculum that draws from modern best practices but is tailored toward the Sub-Saharan Africa context.