Sexual harassment has been identified as the most pressing threat to academic freedom in Ghana’s tertiary education sector, according to the 2025 Africa Academic Freedom Monitoring Report released by the African Coalition for Academic Freedom (ACAF).
The report, launched at the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) in Accra, assessed academic freedom across 30 African countries and highlighted persistent violations affecting teaching, learning, research, and institutional autonomy.
It noted that despite various reforms and policy interventions, sexual harassment remains a major concern in Ghanaian universities, particularly affecting female students.
At the launch, the Regional Director of ACAF, Professor Kwadwo Appiagyei-Atua, described the issue as deeply rooted in power imbalances within academic environments.
He said some students, especially females, continue to face pressure from lecturers who exploit their positions.
“There are also issues about sexual harassment in terms of the relationship between academics and students, which students complain about, especially female students who have been at the mercy of some academics for sex to get marks or to reward them with some other favours and so on, but most of the students are not able to report,” he noted.
The report gave Africa an overall academic freedom violation score of 72 out of 100, indicating widespread challenges across the continent despite ongoing efforts to improve protections.
Professor Appiagyei-Atua acknowledged that Ghana performs relatively better compared to many African countries, but stressed that significant gaps remain.
“Comparatively, if you look at the state of academic freedom on the continent generally, you can see that, relatively, Ghana ranks quite high. Yes, but it doesn’t mean that the picture is rosy in Ghana.
“There are several violations that also take place. So overall, you can rank Ghana as among the best-performing on the continent, but there are still some important gaps that need to be filled,” he explained.
The National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS) also pledged support for efforts to address the challenges raised in the report.
NUGS National Secretary, Titus Owusu Darko, said the union is ready to collaborate with civil society organisations and other stakeholders.
“NUGS, we are committed to partnering with all the CSOs, most importantly the African Coalition for Academic Freedom, and contributing our quota to this particular development… we are willing to contribute our quota and support everything that we can do in our capacity,” he said.
