Social Justice

Aki returned to Legon as Vice Chancellor after his years in Papua New Guinea. This was the beginning of his transition from the classroom into an administrative, research and policy engagement with the challenges of tertiary education in Africa. That shift was completed when on leaving Legon he joined the staff of the Association of African Universities (AAU) and subsequently headed it as Secretary General. Aki’s years of leadership of the University of Ghana, Legon was in the context of the dominance of neoliberal Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) across Africa, for which Ghana was the poster child. One of the more depressing and destructive features of SAP was the questioning of the value of tertiary education in Africa and therefore the wisdom of allocating public expenditure to it. The defence of tertiary education and its value in Africa’s transformation agenda became and has remained an important element of Aki’s intellectual and activist opposition to neoliberalism. Aki’s leadership of the AAU embodied this agenda and was an important and dynamic period in the life of that organisation.

The advancement of the African transformation agenda has been an important driver of Aki’s many public service roles in Ghana, across Africa and internationally. These public service roles have been in education, development policy, political governance, etc. In Ghana several of these have related to the energy and mineral sectors and the strengthening of citizens’ organisation and expression. In recent years Aki, through his role on the boards of several advocacy NGOs and as chair of funding institutions, has played an important role in the deepening of Ghana’s democratic culture. Accepting to chair (1982-90) the National Negotiating Committee for the VALCO Agreement was a major political gamble as well as opportunity to lead the reform of an agreement Aki had campaigned against as a major symbol of the overbearing influence of foreign capital in Ghana. The VALCO renegotiation redressed inequities that the Nkrumah government accepted to access funding for the construction of the Akosombo Dam. The dam was the centerpiece of the Volta River Project, a cornerstone of Nkrumah’s industrialisation and transformation agenda. The subsequent utilization and with it the sharing of the experience from the VALCO renegotiations has been one of Aki’s most important contributions to development policy and practice.

Aki’s growing disciplinary scope and interests allied with the transcending of the parameters of mainstream jurisprudence informed his involvement in the community of progressive scholars in Africa and beyond. This was exemplified in his active involvement in CODESRIA (Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa) in which he became a leading influence and was elected president of the governing council. Aki’s first academic job was in the Faculty of Law    at the then University of East Africa, Dar es Salaam. This context made an important contribution to his development as a progressive scholar and activist with a consistently anti- imperialist position. Newly-independent Tanzania was in  the vanguard of the anti-colonial struggle including serving as the headquarters of the  OAU Liberation  Committee which oversaw collective African support for the national liberation movements across Africa. The University in Dar es Salaam was at the forefront of the struggle for intellectual freedom in Africa and its progressive anti- imperialist scholarship became known as the Dar es Salaam School.

A similar opportunity to combine political commitment and public service was afforded by Aki’s appointment to chair the national committee appointed by Ghana’s President to plan and oversee the celebration of the centenary of the birth of Kwame Nkrumah. The work of the committee made an important contribution to the rehabilitation of Nkrumah’s contested place in Ghanaian history. Aki’s leadership of the Nkrumah centenary celebration neatly united his public service and his status as one of the intellectual leaders of the Ghanaian Left and one of Africa’s most respected progressive scholars. This status is the product of his many years of work in the academy , in public policy analysis, in building independent intellectual institutions and spaces in Africa and the Global South, as a mentor and teacher to young scholars and activists, and as comrade in fighting causes for social justice, the self determination of peoples, the accountability of political power, against the power of Trans National Corporations (TNCs), imperialism and big power bullying. Over the years Aki has been remarkable for his ability to bridge generational divides and earn the respect of even those who do not share his values and principles.