Sir Sam Esson Jonah launching the book officially
The much publicised autobiography of Prof S.K.B Asante titled ‘No Road Signs, No Manuals, My Journey Through Life’ was officially launched on Thursday, with massive patronage from those who attended the ceremony.
About 34 copies of the book, auctioned by Kafui Dey, raked in about GH¢ 27, 500, with Sir Sam Esson Jonah, a renowned businessman and Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast (UCC), purchasing the first copy of the autobiography at a cost of $1,000. Several other copies were sold on the night.
Sir Jonah who was the guest speaker for the launch held at the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, in a statement said, “In No Road Signs, No Manuals, Prof Asante recounts his story in a way that compels us to appreciate certain fundamental life lessons. The first is that success does not come easy. Success demands hardwork and an adherence to certain life.”
He said the autobiography, published by Digibooks Ghana Limited, highlights Prof Asante’s unwavering desire to attain his goals and grit and resolve it took to achieve them.
According to him, Prof Asante’s work ethic is worthy of emulation, praying that the younger generation finds inspiration in reading the 299-page autobiography of a rural Ghanaian boy born at Soabe in the Eastern Region who through perseverance and determination managed to excel in life and is today helping to shape the countless number of brilliant but poor Ghanaian children positively through his foundation.
The autobiography touches on, among other things, Prof Asante’s early school days at Soabe in the Eastern Region where he hails and his travels to places outside Ghana such as Calabar, Nigeria, Harvard and Gainsville Florida Universities, United States, Namibia, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and Pretoria, South Africa, where worked as an academic professor and as an international civil servant.
“I completed my elementary school in December 1948 at age sixteen, without knowing what next to do or where to go. I dreamed of further education but could not imagined how this could be achieved,” Prof SKB Asante recounted his early school days in the 299-page book.
Prof Asante in a remark at the launch described himself as a proud, rural Ghanaian village born scholar.
Among the guests at the ceremony held inside the auditorium of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences were former President John Agyekum Kufuor, Prof Stephen Adei, former Rector of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), Justice Emile Short, ex-Commissioner of Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), Charles B. Josob, High Commissioner of Namibia to Ghana.
BY Melvin Tarlue