Watch a video segment of Patrick G. Awuah Jr., Founder & President of Ashesi University College in Ghana, as he delivers a keynote address at AAI’s State of Education in Africa conference on September 9 at the Ford Foundation in New York City.

The former Microsoft program manager emphasized that education policy in Africa, such as the Millennium Development Goals, must shift from focusing on boosting enrollment numbers to devoting more attention to why students should be educated.

“We need to step back and we need to define clearly what the purpose is for basic, secondary, technical and higher education,” Awuah told more than 120 educators and innovators from Africa and the U.S. attending the conference.

“We need a deeper purpose of why we educate kids,” said Awuah. “We need to figure out — at the basic education level, secondary school level, technical level and higher education level — what exactly we do and what kind of institutional culture do we want to build. It’s about stepping back and looking at this from a leadership perspective first. And if we do that, then I believe we will see a dramatic change in our educational systems.”