From toilet attendant to Vice Chancellor: Meet the man who wants to build Ghana’s MIT

The University of Mines and Technology (UMAT) is having its first Vice Chancellor, who is also an alumnus of the school in 2026. 48-year-old Professor of Geomatic Engineering, Bernard Kumi Boateng, first came to UMAT in 2001 as a student of Geomatic Engineering. His grass-to-grace story- starting as caretaker of a public latrine in Kumasi, the Ashanti regional capital, to becoming one of Ghana’s most sought-after mining engineers- is what sets him apart, and it is based on this record that he plans to turn around UMAT, the university after his heart, into a world-class engineering centre of excellence.

He intends for the 70-year-old institution to be at the heart of Ghana’s mining and mineral resource governance and policymaking, producing talent and academic scholarship that would ensure that Ghana makes the most of its natural resource wealth while protecting the environment. In the questions and answers that follow, we delve deeper into the life of Prof. Bernard Kumi-Boateng, speaking about family, education, Christianity and the vision that fuels his passion to transform Ghana’s premier mining and engineering university.

Our first question was to ask him how he became a teacher. I will say becoming a teacher was due to circumstances. My mother had been diagnosed as diabetic, blind, had had a stroke, and was bedridden, and couldn’t do anything to fend for us.

And so I had to become a toilet attendant on the streets of Bantama and also joined one Obaya at PZ to sell second-hand shoes. All this while we didn’t know where our father was. He had gone in search of greener pastures.

And so I was told he was in Tamale. When I met him, he was a lotto agent, and therefore he could not also fend for me and take me to school. His friend paid my school fees for me so I could start my JSS all over again in Tamale, Zogbeli Block A.

After Zogbeli, I gained admission to Tamale Secondary School to read Science. And it was during that moment that I realised that the only option for me was to become a teacher so that I could fend for and take care of my sick mom and my father, who had also become a lotto agent. Kumi-Boateng with JHS school mates in Bantama, Kumasi in 1994.