Anton Wilhelm Amo, who is also called Anthony William Amo, is the first black person to have gone to university.
He was born in 1703 in Axim, Nzema, in the western region of present-day Ghana. Amo was a professor at the universities of Halle and Jena in Germany after studying there.
He was sent to Germany by the Dutch West India Company in 1707 when he was exactly four years old and was presented as a gift to Dukes Augustus William and Ludwig Rudolf of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, being treated as a member of the family by their father, Anthony Ulrich, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel.
On July 29, 1708, Amo was baptized and, in 1721, confirmed in the palace’s chapel of Salzdahlum near Wolfenbüttel. In 1721 and 1725, he was mentioned as a servant to the Duke’s family.
According to Yaw Anokye Frimpong, a renowned historian and legal practitioner, Anton Wilhem Amo was a philosopher who taught at famous German universities such as Laipzig, Halle, and Wittenberg, among others.
Due to his wisdom and achievement as a philosopher and a scholar, in Germany-Berlin, he is named after various streets.
Though he was a Ghanaian whose effort is not recognized and celebrated, the University of Ghana’s Philosophy Department has dedicated a plaque to him to remember him as the first black scholar and philosopher from 1703–1759.
Explaining the rationale behind the black star design in the Ghana flag, Anokye said in 1703 that the blacks were mostly slaves, so the whites indicated that if one (Anton Wilhem Amo) had been educated to outshine, then he was the black star.
The historian disputed the claim that Busia was the first black scholar. He said Anton Wilhem Amo was born over 200 years ago, before Busia was born.
He noted that Busia was born in 1910 and was rather the first scholar in African studies at the University of Ghana, while Anton Wilhem Amo was the first black to have been educated to become a philosopher even when Busia was not born.
In 2020, Oxford University Press published a translation into English of Wilhelm Amo’s Latin works from the early 1730s.
Source: Ghana/MaxTV/MaxFM/max.com.gh/Joyceline Natally Cudjoe
