Robert Baffour was a noted Ghanaian nuclear engineer, businessman, and civil servant. He was a professor and vice-chancellor of Kwame Nkrumah University, a member of the Association of Commonwealth Universities, the president of the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission, and a fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society. At Kwame Nkrumah University, he helped to establish engineering education. He graduated from the University of London with a B.Sc. in engineering before returning to Ghana to work on the Gold Coast Railway. In 1962, Baffour was elected president of the 6th regular session of the General Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency. He was invested in the OBE in the 1950s and in 1979, the Ghanaian government invested him with the Order of the Volta. At the time of his talk, he headed his own engineering and industrial consultant firm in Ghana.
Baffour’s lecture followed Lord Bowden’s, which presented the problem of education in the Global South from a Western perspective. Baffour was tasked with providing the Global South’s perspective on the issue. His lecture centered on the steps that needed to be taken in order to ensure education is as beneficial as it can be to the Global South. He claimed that education must add to the cultural values that the country already possesses, instead of destroying them to impose European values. The goal of all nations for their systems of higher education was to produce self-sufficiency, stability, and good government. As a result, he noted that Ghanaian universities focused their attention first on education that is primarily concerned with creating civil servants and administrators to run the government, while overlooking the significance of technological and scientific education to address pressing issues like pollution and natural resource development. Specialization in science and applied science, Baffour argued, was essential to development because properly trained engineers could build new, innovative infrastructure rather than just maintaining existing telegraphs or railways. He concluded that each country requires its own type of education and its own solutions to the problems of development based on a reckoning with its own needs.
His lecture was February 16, 1972. While at Queen’s from February 14-18, he met with various student groups to discuss a wide range of Ghanaian problems and aspirations. Topics included his current research on traditional medicine in Ghana, the culture of the Akan people and its impact on society in Ghana, and the past and present problems of developing transportation in the country.