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The Africa Centre for Entrepreneurship and Youth Empowerment (ACEYE) has organized the maiden edition of Professor George Ayittey Memorial Lectures.
The initiative is aimed at shaping the younger generation to aspire to greatness.
The George Ayittey Memorial Lectures is a three-day event that takes place on four university campuses in Ghana, namely the University of Mines and Technology (UMaT), University of Professional Studies-Accra (UPSA), Academic City University College, and the University of Ghana.
The maiden edition of George Ayittey Memorial Lectures is part of efforts to recognize his legacy and ignite the can-do spirit in young people to soar to the greatness of what Prof. Ayittey stood for.
The legacy of Professor George Ayittey, a Ghanaian economist, educator, and author, is to explore the public and academic impacts of the ideas of the visionary leader and their relevance to Africa’s current economic situation.
The memorial lectures targeted the younger generation and aimed at rejuvenating governments in Africa to fight economic issues such as ineffective policies, widespread hardship, poverty, and despair among African young people.
His dream was to see the younger generation of Africa and pave the way for a more accessible and more prosperous continent.
The Africa Centre for Entrepreneurship and Youth Empowerment (ACEYE), which is driving the legacy through George Ayittey`s Memorial Lectures, will further span the scope.
The theme for the maiden memorial lecture is: ‘Africa’s Future: George Ayittey’s Legacy and the Vision of a Free Market’.
The event featured some renowned speakers like Dr. Tom G. Palmer, a political economist and renowned author in Principles of Liberty and the Free Market; Lawyer Kofi Bentil, a distinguished private legal practitioner and policy analyst, and Olumayowa Okediran; a political and economist analyst.
Dr. Tom G. Palmer, who opened the lectures series at UMaT, was an inspiration to the participants from various faculties and members of the ACEYE scholars club.
He inspired and challenged participants to adopt and inherit Prof. George Ayittey`s principles for the liberation of the African continent as well as the deep insights on the theme.
The second day was no exception when Lawyer Kofi Bentil, a distinguished private legal practitioner and policy analyst, took his turn to challenge the students of the University of Professional Studies to be an agent of change to transform the country and the subregion at large.
He urged the students to learn new courses as additional knowledge that will propel them to drive the country to take up its economic fortunes back.
Academic City University College and the University of Ghana had their turn with the three speakers as Olumayowa Okediran, a political and economist analyst from Nigeria engaged the students to imitate what Prof Ayittey stood for.
Professor George Ayittey, born on 13th October 1945 and died 28th January 2022, was a Ghanaian economist, author, and president of the Free Africa Foundation in Washington.
He was a professor at an American university and an associate scholar at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
He championed the argument that “Africa is poor because she is not free,” that the primary cause of African poverty is less a result of the oppression and mismanagement by colonial powers but rather a result of modern oppressive native autocrats and social central planning policies.
He also went beyond criticism of the status quo to advocate for specific ways to address the abuses of the past and present; specifically, he called for democratic government debt reexamination, modernized infrastructure, free market economics, and free trade to promote development.
He founded The Free Africa Foundation in 1993 to serve as a catalyst for reform in Africa.
In 2008, Prof. Ayittey was listed by foreign policy as one of the “Top 100 Public Intellectuals” who “are shaping the tenor of our time”.
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