James Aggrey - The British Empire

British Empire
1815-1914
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James Aggrey

A pioneeer in developing education n Africa
James Aggrey was a pioneer in developing education in Africa. He was born in Anamabu, in present day Ghana in 1875 and following his schooling at Cape Coast Methodist School near Accra he became a teacher at the age of fifteen. He became headmaster of his former school at the age of twenty one and a year later founded the Aborigine Rights Protection Society on the Gold Coast. He was the main translator of the English bible into Fante. He then went to the United States where he settled in North Carolina to teach at Livingstone College. Here he trained as a missionary and in his work he strived to improve mutual understanding between blacks and whites. As a consequence of this work he was asked in 1920, at the age of thirty five, to join the Phelps-Stokes Commission of Inquiry into educational needs in Africa and so he left the United States to return to Africa. He travelled around the central and southern colonial states before returning to his home area where he helped to establish Achimota College near Accra as an institute for higher education. He joined the staff of the college but just nine months after the college had opened he contracted meningitis and died.
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