Eric Asomani Asante 

As a hardworking young man with a great passion for imparting knowledge to others, Eric decided to become an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) teacher. Acquiring a Diploma from the Seventh-Day Adventist College of Education, he joined the Ghana Education Service as a full-time teacher in 2008. After teaching at Ashaley Botwe Basic School for a year, he was transferred to Naylor SDA Basic School in the Tema metropolis of Ghana, where today he is an ICT teacher, curriculum leader and school chaplain.  

As part of his teaching work, Eric has had to face a number of different challenges. His school is situated in a coastal community where children go fishing on Tuesdays and Fridays: as a result they often absent themselves from school, which can greatly affect academic work. Eric has been able to deal with this by using the cadets and volleyball to capture their attention. A major difficulty in the teaching of ICT has been the lack of adequate computers to facilitate practical lessons: as an IT specialist, Eric has been able to solve this problem by connecting one computer system to thirty pupils’ monitors. Internet connectivity to teach Internet topics in the syllabus is also an issue. As a website developer, Eric has dealt with this by creating an offline website that enables him to teach Internet topics in the absence of Internet connectivity. He has subsequently shared this solution with thousands of other ICT teachers. Moreover, these approaches have led to excellent results for pupils: Eric’s students achieve more Grade 1 results in external exams for ICT than for any other subject, and many have pursued computing-related programmes in higher education. 

Eric is also the author and publisher of the “Best Time” computing textbooks for primary and junior high schools – ten textbooks that have received accreditation and approval from the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment. His philosophy is about giving something back to society – and to put this into practice, he has donated 160 computers to six deprived schools, as well as over 4,000 copies of science and ICT textbooks to sixty less endowed schools across the country.  

In 2020, Eric was named Ghana’s Most Outstanding Teacher in the National Teaching Council’s “Ghana Teacher Prize”, and in 2022, he became the winner of the National Best STEM Teacher award. Currently, he is also the ambassador for Vodafone Ghana Foundation for promoting “Vodafone Instant School” in pre-tertiary education in Ghana. If he wins the 2023 Global Teacher Prize, Eric will use the prize funds to (a) expand his tree-planting projects, (b) complete the ultra-modern Science and ICT laboratory complex in Akoase village, (c) expand the activities of his “Digital Age IT Fun Club”, (d) put together a virtual forum that will enable pupils to acquire textbooks via mobile apps, and (e) create chat rooms where pupils across the country can meet to discuss educational topics and exchange knowledge and skills.