AIMS Ghana Graduates Record Class as Alumna Urges Them to Solve Africa's Toughest Problems

The African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) Ghana held its 14th graduation ceremony on Saturday, 27 June, at the Cedi Conference Centre of the University of Ghana, Legon, producing its largest graduating class to date. A total of 130 students received their degrees at the event, which was addressed by distinguished alumna and guest speaker Dr Perpetual Andam Boiquaye.

Dr Andam Boiquaye, a Senior Lecturer in Statistics and Actuarial Science at the University of Ghana and a former postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University in New York, drew on her personal journey to inspire the graduating cohort. She reminded graduates that she herself was part of AIMS Ghana's very first intake — a class with no local alumni to look up to and no established roadmap to follow.

"We didn't have a local line of alumni ahead of us to look up to. We only had a dream, a lot of late nights, endless pages of calculations, and the shared belief that mathematical sciences could transform our continent," she told the audience.

From Shy Student to Global Academic

Reflecting on her own transformation, Dr Andam Boiquaye said she arrived at AIMS as a reserved student and left with a confidence that went well beyond the classroom. She credited the institution with equipping her to defend ideas with evidence and compete on the world stage. In a particularly candid moment, she admitted that her current accomplishments would have seemed wholly improbable during her student years.

"If someone had told my younger self — stressed about assignments and wondering whether I belonged in advanced mathematics — that one day I would stand here as a senior lecturer with a Columbia postdoc, I would have calculated the probability as strictly zero. But here we are. AIMS does not just teach you equations — it rewrites the equations of your life," she said.

Setbacks as Data, Not Defeat

Drawing on her specialism in credit risk and actuarial science, she urged the new graduates to reframe failure as useful information rather than evidence of inadequacy. "Failure is not a default on your potential. It is simply data. It is feedback. Every setback is just an iteration in the algorithm of your ultimate success," she said. She also paid tribute to the late Centre President Professor Francis Alottey, who mentored her, and acknowledged current Centre President Dr Prince Osei for his dedication to student welfare. Welcoming the Class of 2026 into the global AIMS alumni community, she concluded: "You are no longer just students of an institute — you are ambassadors of a legacy. Go out into the world and disrupt it with your brilliance."