The Second Vice Chancellor of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana, was neither an engineer nor a scientist, he was a distinguished medical doctor. Dr. Emanuel Evans-Anfom, who served from 1967 to 1973, was appointed by the military regime that overthrew Kwame Nkrumah on February 24, 1966 to replace Nkrumah’s friend, Dr. RP Baffour. The new Vice Chancellor was not well received at a science and technology university that did not have a medical school. The general opinion among the academic staff was that the vice-chancellor should relate to one of the existing faculties of the university. However, at the end of his tenure it was generally agreed that Dr. Evans-Anfom had been a successful leader, not least because he made the decision to establish the Technology Consulting Center (TCC) before it had any government guarantees or international development agencies that would provide funds.

Dr. Evans-Anfom came from a prominent Accra mixed-blood family, as the Welsh name Evans indicates. An affable, light-skinned, soft-spoken gentleman with an upper-class English accent, Dr. Evans-Anfom matched many people’s perception of a successful Harley Street stuntman. It may have been his appearance and mannerisms that prolonged his unpopularity, but there was no doubt that Dr. Evans-Anfom had more difficulty than usual in chairing the Academic Council and winning their support for his various initiatives. Indeed, his rule might have been nearly impossible had it not been for the support of a strong minority of expatriate members.

Dr. Evans-Anfom strongly believed that a university should not only teach and research; it should also have a ‘third role’ in community service. He wanted KNUST not to be an Ivory Tower but a dynamic force in national economic development. Shortly after taking office, he asked Dr EF Schumacher’s Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG) to send a mission to Kumasi to advise on the university’s ‘third role’. The mission of Sir John Palmer and Mr. George McRobbie was carried out, and a plan for a Technology Consulting Center was drawn up. Then, in 1971, Professor Harold Dickinson of the University of Edinburgh spent six months at KNUST talking to local businessmen and entrepreneurs to gain community support for the initiative.

Having a doctor in charge of KNUST exacerbated a longstanding grievance in Ghanaian academic circles. Professors and lecturers at the University of Ghana Medical School, Legon, Accra, received a salary supplement to compensate for the lack of opportunities for consultancy work. KNUST engineers felt that they, too, should be paid the supplement or allowed to do paid consulting for outside agencies. The dispute led to a crisis in 1970 with the resignation of 13 engineering professors.

With the help of the Association of Commonwealth Universities, London, short-term and long-term replacements were recruited from the UK and elsewhere, arriving in Kumasi in early 1971. The university now had a corps of young foreign academics eager to engage in the new field of intermediate (appropriate) technology, as well as a group of Ghanaian engineers equally eager for paid outside consulting contracts. The time seemed right to move forward with the TCC, which could meet both needs, but no funds were available for this purpose. It was then that Dr. Evans-Anfom decided to release funds from the university’s meager reserves and asked the first director to open the TCC office on January 11, 1972.

Two days later, the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Kofi Busia was overthrown in a military coup that brought Colonel IK Acheampong to power. Changes at the top were expected to herald changes in national institutions and Dr. Evans-Anfom must have felt that his days as Vice Chancellor were numbered. However, he was able to hold on for more than a year and, shortly after his departure in 1973, he reappeared as the government’s Commissioner of Education. It was in this capacity that he visited KNUST in his ministerial Range Rover luxury 4×4 saloon, and visited the TCC to review progress. With some pride he referred to himself as ‘The Father of the Technological Consulting Center’.