When the Vice-Chancellor becomes the newsroom: How Ghana’s university leaders are redrawing the social media map

A university Vice-Chancellor receives a delegation in the morning. Photographs are taken, discussions conclude and, within hours, the engagement appears on LinkedIn.

But whose account should tell the story first, the Vice-Chancellor’s or the university’s?

Across Ghana’s higher education landscape, university leaders are adopting markedly different approaches to social media. Some amplify material produced by their institutions. Others run active executive platforms centred largely on their own engagements, complete with original photographs, lengthy narratives, bespoke videos and personalised visual branding. At the other extreme are Vice-Chancellors with little or no meaningful social media presence.

These differences raise questions about institutional communication, ownership of university news, executive branding and whether the visibility of university leaders strengthens institutional channels or creates parallel communication systems.

The institutional amplifiers
Among the clearest examples are Ashesi University founder and President Dr. Patrick Awuah and University of Ghana Vice-Chancellor Prof. Nana Aba Appiah Amfo.

Dr. Awuah frequently reposts material originating from Ashesi University rather than repackaging the same activity as a separate presidential story. The communication chain is straightforward:

The university publishes. The President amplifies.

Prof. Appiah Amfo employs a similar but more conversational approach. When the University of Ghana posted about outgoing senior officials, for example, she shared the institutional post and added a brief congratulatory message. In another instance, she reposted content from the University’s Centre for Gender Studies and added her personal reflections.

The University remains the source of institutional information while the Vice-Chancellor adds something the corporate account cannot easily provide, which are personality, judgement and leadership perspective.

The executive publishers
A different model is visible in the LinkedIn activities of KNUST Vice-Chancellor Prof. Christian Agyare and University of Cape Coast Vice-Chancellor Prof. Denis Worlanyo Aheto.

Both favour original first-person narratives around activities in which they are directly involved.

Prof. Aheto, for instance, published an extensive reflection following his investiture as UCC’s 12th Vice-Chancellor, expressing gratitude and outlining his understanding of the responsibility of the office. Such a post has an obvious personal purpose: the University can report an investiture, but only the Vice-Chancellor can explain what assuming the office means to him.

Prof. Agyare similarly frames engagements around themes such as collaboration, transformation, youth development, research and partnerships.

The approach becomes more complicated, however, when executive accounts independently report routine university activities that institutional channels are also equipped to cover.

Who breaks the university’s news?

The question becomes particularly important when the executive publishes an institutional activity before the university itself.

This has occasionally occurred with Prof. Agyare’s social media communication. It means that followers may first encounter a KNUST engagement through the Vice-Chancellor’s personal account rather than the University’s central channels.

A similar concern arises at the University of Professional Studies, Accra, where Vice-Chancellor Prof. John Kwaku Mensah Mawutor maintains an active Facebook presence. His posts cover university events, conferences, leadership engagements and matters affecting students. Some material appearing on his account does not appear to have corresponding coverage on the University’s main handle.

Where significant institutional information appears first or exclusively on an officeholder’s account, that account begins to perform the function of an official university channel.

The issue is not whether a Vice-Chancellor has authority to speak for the university. The question is whether information belonging to the institutional record should depend on audiences following an individual officeholder.

KNUST’s unusual paradox
The KNUST case is particularly striking because the University is not suffering from a shortage of content. It is worth noting that this was not always the case; the institution’s digital communication has evolved considerably in recent times.

Today, its institutional platforms carry a prolific stream of original university news, research communication, photography, videos, student stories, features and event coverage. The content is often original, the writing sharp and the range unusually broad. I am yet to access their staff strength though. From my review and some key professionals who shared similar perspectives with me, few higher education social media operations in the Africa appear to match the depth and consistency of KNUST’s output, although the sheer volume can occasionally become overwhelming.

Against this backdrop, a separately produced Vice-Chancellor content stream requires particularly careful management.

An institution that already possesses the capacity to tell its stories extensively does not necessarily need the Vice-Chancellor’s account to function as another newsroom. The greater opportunity is to use the executive platform as an institutional amplifier. This would mean, selecting, sharing and interpreting the strongest content already emerging from the University’s communication ecosystem while adding the Vice-Chancellor’s distinct leadership perspective.

In that model, the institutional platform tells the KNUST story; the Vice-Chancellor uses his visibility to extend its reach and explain why that story matters.

Humanising a Vice-Chancellor or personalising the institution?

The question extends beyond the socials.
A video produced around Prof. Agyare’s investiture included scenes of him preparing for the ceremony in a private setting with his wife and children.

The sequence may have been intended to humanise the new Vice-Chancellor and provide intimate access to an important moment. Critics of such an approach, however, may see it as borrowing from the visual language of political personality branding, where cameras follow leaders behind the scenes and family imagery helps construct a public persona.

There is nothing inherently inappropriate about showing the family of a university leader. The professional question is one of editorial purpose: does the intimate access illuminate the office and its responsibilities, or does the institution become a backdrop for the personality of the officeholder?

University leadership can be humanised without becoming personalised.

Polished video without a story
A related concern is visible in some executive video production.

Both the investiture material and a video involving an engagement with Rwandan counterparts featured polished visuals and attractive graphics. Yet professional storytelling requires more than visual treatment.

A strong institutional video should establish what is happening, why it matters, who benefits and what changes as a result.

A meeting with international partners, for example, can move beyond footage of arrivals, handshakes and discussions to explain the purpose of the engagement, introduce the issues under discussion and show what students, researchers or society could gain from it.

Without that narrative structure, polished footage risks becoming event documentation rather than storytelling.

For a university with KNUST’s depth of research, expertise and institutional activity, that represents a missed opportunity.

The protagonist problem
There is another useful question for evaluating executive accounts:

Who is usually the protagonist?
If a Vice-Chancellor mainly posts when he meets someone, visits an institution, receives an award, signs an agreement or addresses an event, the platform can gradually become a digital diary of the officeholder.

If the same leader regularly amplifies researchers, students, alumni, departments and achievements in which he has no direct involvement, the account performs a broader institutional function.

That is perhaps the most significant difference between the Awuah-Appiah Amfo model and the Agyare-Aheto tendency observed in these examples.

Awuah and Appiah Amfo use their personal reach to redistribute institutional content. Their visibility therefore becomes an additional distribution network for their universities.

The difference is between documenting the Vice-Chancellor at the university and using the Vice-Chancellor’s visibility to showcase the university through its Vice-Chancellor.

The personalised watermark
Some photographs appearing on Agyare’s LinkedIn posts also carry a personalised circular watermark associated with the Vice-Chancellor alongside KNUST visual identifiers.

While this gives the content a recognisable identity, it raises another institutional branding question.

Universities are permanent; Vice-Chancellors are temporary custodians.

If executive communication develops its own visual marks, photography, graphics and editorial identity, the institution must determine whether it is branding the Office of the Vice-Chancellor or the individual occupying it.

An institutional identifier such as “KNUST | Office of the Vice-Chancellor” survives leadership transitions. A personalised executive mark does not.

Long posts are not the problem
Post length itself is not evidence of poor practice.

Prof. Aheto’s lengthy investiture reflection, for instance, communicates gratitude, leadership philosophy and personal commitment. That is different from reproducing a university news report.

The relevant question is whether the additional words provide executive insight or simply duplicate institutional information. Prof. Agyare and Aheto have not been nailing it.

A long reflection explaining why a research breakthrough matters to a university’s strategy can be valuable. A second lengthy account of an event already comprehensively reported by the university adds less.

The distinction can be expressed simply:
The university should own the facts; the Vice-Chancellor should add meaning.

UPSA and official information
The UPSA examples take the issue further.
Following flooding, Prof. Mawutor used LinkedIn to address student welfare and indicate how the University would respond to affected academic activities.

Such intervention from a Vice-Chancellor may be appropriate during an urgent situation. But once an executive account communicates operational assurances affecting students, the post effectively carries institutional authority.

That raises practical questions: Is the same information archived on the university website? Which version constitutes the official record? What happens if the post is edited or deleted? And where does the information reside after the Vice-Chancellor leaves office?

These are not merely social media questions. They concern institutional governance and records management.

The digitally quiet Vice-Chancellors
At the opposite end are university leaders with limited LinkedIn activity.

Prof. Lydia Aziato of the University of Health and Allied Sciences has a LinkedIn presence but little visible activity. Other university leaders observed with minimal or almost no meaningful activity include Prof. Stephen Jobson Mitchual of the University of Education, Winneba; Prof. Frederick Kwaku Sarfo of Akenten Appiah-Menka University of Skills Training and Entrepreneurial Development; Prof. Elvis Asare-Bediako of the University of Energy and Natural Resources; Prof. Albert Luguterah of C.K. Tedam University of Technology and Applied Sciences; and Prof. Emmanuel Kanchebe Derbile of Simon Diedong Dombo University of Business and Integrated Development Studies.

The pattern extends to some private universities, including Prof. Kwabena Agyepong-Kodua of Pentecost University, Dr. Samuel H. Donkor of All Nations University, Prof. William Koomson of Valley View University and Prof. Ebenezer Oduro Owusu of Presbyterian University, Ghana.

Inactivity is not evidence of poor university leadership. But in an era when partnerships, research visibility, alumni relations and institutional reputation increasingly operate through professional networks, executive absence can represent a communications opportunity forgone.

The challenge therefore sits between two extremes: the digitally absent Vice-Chancellor and the Vice-Chancellor whose account becomes another university communications office.

Turning executive visibility into institutional capital

The strongest model lies somewhere between those extremes.

The university should remain the authoritative source for institutional news, notices, research, appointments, policies and emergency information. The Vice-Chancellor can then amplify selected material while contributing a perspective unavailable from the corporate account.

If KNUST publishes a research breakthrough, for example, its Vice-Chancellor could repost it with a brief reflection on why the work matters to the University’s research agenda.

The researchers gain visibility. KNUST gains additional reach. The Vice-Chancellor demonstrates leadership interest. And audiences have a reason to follow both accounts.

Executive visibility then becomes institutional capital rather than a competing brand.

There is also a succession test.
University websites and official social media accounts survive changes in leadership. Personal professional accounts follow individuals. If significant portions of a university’s contemporary activities exist primarily on the account of a former Vice-Chancellor, part of its institutional memory has effectively followed the officeholder out of office.

Not less communication, but clearer communication

The lesson is not that Vice-Chancellors should post less.

University leaders should be visible. They should articulate ideas, celebrate students and researchers, engage alumni, discuss higher education and show the human dimension of leadership.

But visibility requires architecture.
Dr. Awuah and Prof. Appiah Amfo demonstrate how executive reach can amplify institutional communication. Aheto and Agyare demonstrate the possibilities of substantive first-person executive storytelling, but also the risk of becoming overly centred on activities involving the officeholder. Mawutor illustrates the questions that arise when executive and official communication begin to overlap. The relatively inactive accounts elsewhere demonstrate the opportunity lost when university leaders remain absent from professional digital spaces.

For KNUST, the issue is especially important because the University already possesses a remarkably productive institutional communication system. The challenge is not creating another strong content channel around the Vice-Chancellor. It is ensuring that the Vice-Chancellor’s visibility magnifies the communication strength KNUST already possesses.

The emerging challenge for Ghana’s universities is therefore not choosing between institutional and executive communication. It is defining the relationship between them.

The university should be the source of record. The Vice-Chancellor should be the source of leadership.

Author's Declaration
This opinion piece reflects the author's views and professional experience. The drafting and language refinement of the manuscript were assisted by ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence language model developed by OpenAI. The author reviewed, edited, and takes full responsibility for the content, interpretations, and conclusions presented.

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