Keynote Speakers

Professor Kofi Asare Opoku
What Every International Visitor Should Know About Ghana

Prof. Kofi Asare Opoku is the Vice President for Institutional Advancement at African University College of Communications (AUCC).  After retiring from the University of Ghana in 1994, where he served as an Associate Professor of Religion and Ethics at the Institute of African Studies, Prof. Asare Opoku taught at the following institutions: Lafayette College (Easton, Pennsylvania); Queens College (New York); University of Calabar (Nigeria); University of Northern Iowa (Cedar Falls, Iowa); and North Carolina State University (Raleigh, NC).  His field of scholarly interests includes African Religion and Culture, and African Diasporic Religions in the Americas.  Prof. Asare Opoku’s publications include: Speak to the Winds: Proverbs From Africa (1975); West African Traditional Religion (1978); Healing For God’s World (1990), with Kim Yong Bock and Antoinette Wire; Hearing and Keeping: Akan Proverbs (1997) and Togbe Dawuso Dofe: Mami Water in the Ewe Tradition (2007), with Kathleen O’Brien Wicker. He also farms in the Akuapem Hills of Ghana’s Eastern Region—growing oranges, palm fruits, coconuts, cocoyams, plantains, bananas, cinnamon, bread fruits, etc.—and preserves a 30-acre tropical forest as his gift to the world.

Dr. Vladimir Antwi-Danso
Globalization and the Challenges of Higher Education in Africa

Dr. Vladimir Antwi-Danso is a Senior Research Fellow at the Legon Centre for International Affairs at the University of Ghana.  He earned his BA in Philosophy and Russian at the University of Ghana, his MA at the Fletcher School of Law and International Diplomacy at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, and his Masters in Philology and Ph.D. in Political Science at Leningrad University in the erstwhile USSR.  His areas of specialization include, among others, international finance and development, international trade, international relations, peace and conflict studies, and international diplomacy.  Dr. Antwi-Danso, who is fluent in Russian, Twi, English, and his native tongue, Guan, has a wide range of scholarly publications and consults for a number of international organizations, including the World Bank, the United Nations, and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).