However,
local agitation and the urgent need to put the idea into practice
after eleven years of debate pressurised the Government to allow
the school to begin functioning but on the understanding that
it would later be moved to Accra. If that had happened it would
not have been called "Mfantsipim" since the name means "a countless
number of Fantes".
Mfantsipim was the first secondary school to be established
in the Gold Coast and in 1931 it moved to its present location
at Kwabotwe Hill in the northern part of the Town, at the top
of Kotokuraba Road, Cape Coast. The school sometimes has been
referred to as 'Kwabotwe' for that reason.
It has turned out some of the country’s best known public figures
in all walks of life, men such as Alex Quaison-Sackey, former
President of the General Assembly of UNO, Dr. K A Busia, the
first African to occupy a Chair in the Hague and a former Head
of State.
It was deemed to be a Grammar School because Latin and Greek
were taught but the school also offered carpentry, art and crafts
and it has always been known as Mfantsipim School. It was an
all boys boarding school although the intake included a small
number of "day students", that is pupils who attended school
from home.
By
Kwesi Kay