The Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana will confer on Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies and Principal of Cave Hill Campus Professor Sir Hilary Beckles an honorary doctorate at a Special Congregation in the Great Hall of the university on Friday November 27, 2009.

Sir Hilary, the first Caribbean honoree of the university, will receive the honor within the context of his being invitated to deliver the 6th R.P Baffuor Memorial Lecture in Ghana which will be hosted jointly with the University of Ghana, and the Cape Coast University. Different lectures will be delivered in each university under the general theme “African Struggle for Caribbean Freedom”. The R.P Baffuor Memorial Lecture was introduced by the Council of the Kwame Nkrumah University in 1977 to honor its first Ghanaian Vice Chancellor in recognition of his sound leadership and immense contribution to the development and growth of the university.  

Sir Hilary is being honored for his outstanding achievements as an historian and academic administrator, and particularly his contribution in the promotion of African culture and History in his teaching, research, and representation of African institutions and people in the international arena. Sir Hilary is no stranger to the university community in Ghana having worked there closely with scholars, students and teachers over the years on various projects. As the principal writer in the UNESCO Slave Routes Schools Project he toured schools in Ghana and conducted teacher training workshops, as well as delivered academic seminars within the trade union movement and in civil society.

In 2007 Sir Hilary, working with the prestigious Institute of Early American History and Culture, in Virginia, USA, where he had served on the board of directors, was instrumental in organizing a major conference of American and European scholars in Ghana in order to discuss the latest research on African-Atlantic History. There he met again with graduate students and academics in order to promote their research and publication in the West. His two books (1) Trading Souls: Europe’s Transatlantic Trade in Africans; (2) Saving Souls: The Struggle to End the Transatlantic Trade in Africans, both published in 2007 to mark the bicentenary of the British abolition of the Slave Trade, were written principally for African schools and universities and are widely used in Ghana.

Recently, Sir Hilary has spearheaded an MOU with the Centre for African Studies, at the University of Ghana, to collaborate in delivering at Cave Hill next academic year, a Masters Degree in African Studies, a pioneering project in African studies at UWI. Last year in Accra, he was elected to the board of directors of the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD), in recognition of his standing as a leading scholar in African Diaspora research.

Sir Hilary has stated that he feels “humbled by the invitation to deliver the prestigious R.P.Baffuor lecture at these three universities, and grateful for the conferment of the honorary degree by a university he respects and has visited”. “It will be my fifth visit to Ghana, a country that is very dear to my heart and soul,” he said. “The honorary degree will serve as a reminder of the reason why we at Cave Hill chose to use the motif of the Golden Stool of Asante as the design of the new administration building.” The Golden Stool in Ghana is considered the symbolic resting place of the spirits of ancestors.