“I felt called to take the lights of education and the Gospel to the deaf in Africa…at that time, Africa had only a dozen special schools and virtually no churches for the deaf.”
Andrew Foster with students from the boarding school for deaf children at Mampong-Akwapim, Ghana, about 1961. Photo and text courtesy of Gallaudet University Archives.
Andrew Foster
(Founder of Deaf Education in Ghana)
Foster was born on June 27, 1925, in Ensley, Ala. At the age of 11, both he and his brother contracted spinal meningitis and became deaf. During Foster's time as a child, education for African Americans was limited only up to the sixth grade. Foster attended the Alabama School for the Colored Deaf in Talladega, as racial segregation was still in effect. In order to continue with his education, he moved in with his aunt in Flint, Mich., at the age of 17 and went as far as the eighth grade at the Michigan School for the Deaf. Foster then took night classes and correspondence courses while working in auto factories and restaurants in Chicago and Detroit. At last, in 1950, he received a diploma in accountancy and business administration from the Detroit Institute of Commerce, and then his high school diploma through a correspondence course in 1951 at the age of 26.
Foster first arrived in Africa in 1957. At the time, on the entire continent there were just 12 schools for the deaf in countries within the Maghreb region in North Africa and in the apartheid Union of South Africa. Foster set up the first deaf school in West Africa in Osu, a suburb of Accra, Ghana. Named the Ghana Mission School for the Deaf, Foster used a borrowed classroom from a Presbyterian Church. He then moved the school 30 miles away to Mampong-Akwapim after receiving a donation of land and building in which to establish a permanent residential school. The school served 80 children and some adults. He served as the school's director until 1965. Foster also established Nigeria's first deaf school, the Ibadan Mission School for the Deaf in 1960 in Ibadan and shortly after two other schools in the cities of Enugu and Kaduna, as well as Liberia's first deaf school. He also served on the Ghana Government Cabinet Committee in 1960 which resulted into the establishment of eight more schools for the deaf in Ghana.
Foster taught students, trained teachers, educated the public about the needs of deaf Africans, and advised government officials about the need for more schools for the deaf. As a result of Foster's unwavering efforts, Gallaudet began welcoming the first generation of students from Foster schools in Africa. Seth Tetteh-Ocloo, '64 & G-'65 came to Gallaudet from the Ghana Mission School for the Deaf. Seth followed Foster's footsteps to Gallaudet after completing his high school education through the same correspondence course that Foster used to complete his own high school education. Seth went on to earn a master's degree in education from Gallaudet and doctorates in both educational psychology and rehabilitation from Southern Illinois University. Seth returned to Ghana to become a rehabilitation officer with the country's Department of Social Welfare and Community Development under the Ministry of Social Welfare. Seth also founded the Ghana's second school for the deaf.
After sadly passing away in 1987, Andrew Fosters memory lives on through the school and its students.