Patrick Awuah, a 2015 MacArthur Fellow, founded a university to educate Africa’s future leaders. He also plays Words With Friends.
In September, the MacArthur Foundation awarded Patrick Awuah one of its “genius” fellowships for his work bringing higher education to Ghana. After attending college in the U.S. and working for Microsoft as an engineer, Awuah returned to his home country in 2002 to found Asheshi University in Accra. Since that time it’s been established as one of Ghana’s top-notch universities, with programming that focuses on battling corruption in Ghana while addressing gender, ethnic, and economic inequality.
