Kwabotwe

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Kwabotwe is a hill in Ghana. It is the location of Mfantsipim, one of the oldest Ghanaian secondary schools.

[edit] History

By the early nineteenth century, Europeans had settled the coastal regions of Ghana, particularly Cape Coast, where they could build their castles to serve as a home base.

When in 1876, a group of British missionaries of the Methodist church thought of a location to educate young Ghanaians not only to read and write, but to develop their intellectual capacities, they looked up this hill, Kwabotwe, to establish the first secondary school in Ghana.

They had a vision of churning out several young Fante people of Cape-Coast into scholars, and so they named the school MFANTSIPIM, which literally means thousands of Fantes. It had a very humble beginning with only a single brick building that served as dormitory and classroom to the first eight students of the school.

The Kwabotwe hill, on which Mfantsipim stands today, was a gift from the Aborigines Society which was taken from part of the estate bequeathed in perpetuity to the Society by Kwa Botwe, alias Jacob Wilson Sey, the first President of the Aborigines Society.