President Akufo-Addo has hailed the late Ghanaian playwright, Professor Ama Ata Aidoo, for contributing her quota to liberate Africa from a mentality that fosters inferiority complex and total dependence of the West.

The president made this profound statement on Thursday during the funeral ceremony of Professor Ama Ata Aidoo at the forecourt of the State House.

In his tribute, the president noted that the late playwright and former Education Minister contributed immensely to the emancipation of mental slavery despite not lifting a gun to fight.

"Even though she never took up a gun in Africa's struggles for independence, her pen did the fighting in helping to ensure the liberation of the political and social consciousness of the African," he said.

Her life's work, he said was the classic example of the off sighted adage "the pen is mightier than the sword".

Prof. Ama Ata Aidoo passed on at the age of 81 in the early hours Wednesday, May 31, 2023, after a short illness.

The octogenarian who received international recognition as one of the most prominent African writers of the 20th and 21st centuries wrote her first play, The Dilemma of a Ghost, in 1964.

For more than fifty years she has produced top-notch plays including Anowa, Pittsburgh, Our Sister KillJoy, her first novel published in 1977.

In 2000, Aidoo founded the Mbaasem Foundation, a non-governmental organization based in Ghana with a mission "to support the development and sustainability of African women writers and their artistic output".

The academician who studied at the University of Ghana, Legon and held a fellowship in creative writing at Stanford University in California, was appointed Minister of Education under the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) in 1982.

She resigned after 18 months, realising that she would be unable to achieve her aim of making education in Ghana freely accessible to all.