Hesse is a German surname. Notable people with the surname include:
The Nzema are an ethnic group numbering about 328,700, of whom 262,000 live in southwestern Ghana and 66,700 live in the southeast of Côte d'Ivoire. In Ghana the Nzema area is divided into three electoral districts: Nzema East Municipal, also known as Evalue Gwira; Ellembele; and Nzema West, also known as Jomoro. Their language is also known as Nzima or Appolo.
Wesley Girls' High School (WGHS) is an educational institution for girls in Cape Coast in the Central region of Ghana. It was founded in 1836 by Harriet Wrigley, the wife of a Methodist minister. The school is named after the founder of Methodism, John Wesley.
Clerk is a patronymic surname of English-language and Scottish-Gaelic origin, ultimately derived from the Latin clericus meaning "scribe", "secretary" or a scholar within a religious order, referring to someone who was educated. Clark evolved from "clerk". First records of the name are found in 12th century England. The name has many variants.
Herman Kojo Chinery-Hesse is a Ghanaian technology entrepreneur and the founder of theSOFTtribe, the oldest and largest software company in Ghana. He is popularly known as "the Bill Gates of Africa". Chinery-Hesse also made the list of 15 Black STEM Innovators. In March 2019, he was introduced as the Commonwealth Chair for Business and Technology Initiatives for Africa.
Mary Chinery-Hesse,, née Blay is an international civil servant and diplomat serving as the first woman Chancellor of the University of Ghana, inducted on 1 August 2018. She was the first female Deputy Director-General of the International Labour Organization
Carl Henry Clerk was a Ghanaian agricultural educationist, administrator, journalist, editor and church minister who was elected the fourth Synod Clerk of the Presbyterian Church of the Gold Coast, assuming the role of chief ecclesial officer of the national church from 1950 to 1954. Between 1960 and 1963, he was also the Editor of the Christian Messenger, established by the Basel Mission in 1883, as the newspaper of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana.
MatildaJohannaClerk was a medical pioneer and a science educator on the Gold Coast and later in Ghana as well as the second Ghanaian woman to become an orthodox medicine-trained physician. The first woman in Ghana and West Africa to attend graduate school and earn a postgraduate diploma, Clerk was also the first Ghanaian woman in any field to be awarded an academic merit scholarship for university education abroad. M. J. Clerk was the fourth West African woman to become a physician after Nigerians, Agnes Yewande Savage (1929), the first West African woman medical doctor and Elizabeth Abimbola Awoliyi (1938) in addition to Susan de Graft-Johnson, née Ofori-Atta (1947), Ghana's first woman physician. These pioneering physicians were all early advocates of maternal health, paediatric care and public health in the sub-region. For a long time after independence in 1957, Clerk and Ofori-Atta were the only two women doctors in Ghana. By breaking the glass ceiling in medicine and other institutional barriers to healthcare delivery, they were an inspiration to a generation of post-colonial Ghanaian and West African female doctors at a time the field was still a male monopoly and when the vast majority of women worldwide had very limited access to biomedicine and higher education. Pundits in the male-dominated medical community in that era described Matilda J. Clerk as "the beacon of emancipation of Ghanaian womanhood."
Nathan Anang Quao, was a Ghanaian statesman and educationist who served as Secretary (Minister) at the PNDC Secretariat from 1984 to 1993 and Special Assistant to President Jerry Rawlings from 1993 to 2001. A career diplomat and civil servant, he retired as Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Civil Service in 1973. Quao was the founding headmaster of Keta Secondary School in 1953 and was appointed the first chairman of the Ghana Education Service Council in 1974.
Nicholas Timothy Clerk was a Ghanaian academic, administrator and Presbyterian minister who served as the Rector of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) from 1977 to 1982. He was also the vice-chairman of the Public Services Commission of Ghana. Clerk chaired the Public Services Commission of Uganda from 1989 to 1990.
The Salem School, Osu, or the Osu Presbyterian Boys’ Boarding School or simply, Osu Salem, formerly known as the Basel Mission Middle School, is an all boys’ residential middle or junior secondary school located in the suburb of Osu in Accra, Ghana. The Salem School was the first middle school and the first boarding school to be established in Ghana. The school was founded under the auspices of the Basel Mission in 1843 and supervised by three pioneering missionaries and schoolmasters, Jamaican, Alexander Worthy Clerk and Angolan-born Jamaican Catherine Mulgrave together with the German-trained Americo-Liberian George Peter Thompson.
The Ebenezer Presbyterian Church, formerly known as the Basel Mission Church, Christiansborg, is a historic Protestant church located in the suburb of Osu in Accra, Ghana. The church was founded by the Basel Evangelical Missionary Society in 1847. Previously near the Christiansborg Castle at a hamlet called Osu Amanfong, where a commemorative monument now stands, the church relocated northwards to its present location near the Salem School when a new chapel was constructed and consecrated in 1902. The church is affiliated to the Presbyterian Church of Ghana. Liturgical services are conducted in English and the Ga language.
The Accra Ridge Church is an English-speaking inter-denominational Protestant church based in the residential neighbourhood of Ridge in Accra, Ghana. The church is affiliated to the Anglican Diocese of Accra, Methodist Church Ghana and the Presbyterian Church of Ghana. The church also has branches in the suburbs of Tudu and Manet. The church is also the owner of the Ridge Church School, an independent and parochial preparatory day basic school located on the chapel premises.
Pauline Miranda Clerk was a Ghanaian civil servant, diplomat and a presidential advisor.
Gold Coast Euro-Africans were a historical demographic based in coastal urban settlements in colonial Ghana, that arose from unions between European men and African women from the late 15th century – the decade between 1471 and 1482, until the mid-20th century, circa 1957, when Ghana attained its independence. In this period, different geographic areas of the Gold Coast were politically controlled at various times by the Portuguese, Germans, Swedes, Danes, Dutch and the British. There are also records of merchants of other European nationalities such as the Spaniards, French, Italians and Irish, operating along the coast, in addition to American sailors and traders from New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Euro-Africans were influential in intellectual, technocratic, artisanal, commercial and public life in general, actively participating in multiple fields of scholarly and civic importance. Scholars have referred to this Euro-African population of the Gold Coast as "mulattos", "mulatofoi" and "owulai" among other descriptions. The term, owula conveys contemporary notions of "gentlemanliness, learning and urbanity" or "a salaried big man" in the Ga language. The cross-cultural interactions between Europeans and Africans were mercantile-driven and an avenue to boost social capital for economic and political gain i.e. "wealth and power". The growth and development of Christianity during the colonial period also instituted motifs of modernity vis-à-vis Euro-African identity. This model created a spectrum of practices, ranging from a full celebration of native African customs to a total embrace and acculturation of European culture.
Regina Hesse (1832–1898), also Rottmann, was a Euro-African schoolteacher in colonial Ghana. As an educationist, she was one of first women exemplars on the Gold Coast to become a school administrator. Hesse was trained by the Angolan-born Jamaican Moravian pioneer woman teacher, Catherine Mulgrave who set up three girls’ specialist boarding schools at Osu, Abokobi and Odumase and was active in the women's Christian ministry in Christiansborg, Accra.
The Hesse family is a Ghanaian family of Dano-German origins. The progenitor of the family was Dr. Lebrecht Wilhelm Hesse, a German medical doctor and a subject of the Danish Crown under King Christian VII. Hesse was an employee of the Danish colonial administration. After qualifying in medicine and surgery, he sailed to the Gold Coast as a young bachelor in the late 1700s to treat chaplains from the Church of Denmark and its latter affiliate, the Danish Missionary Society, civil servants and garrison soldiers stationed at the Christiansborg Castle, now called the Osu Castle. He married a local Ga woman, Lamiorkai, from Osu Amantra in Accra.
Lebrecht Wilhelm Fifi Hesse was a Ghanaian public servant and the first black African Rhodes Scholar. He served as Director-General of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation on two occasions. He was also a member of the Public Services Commission of Ghana.
Virginia Hesse is a Ghanaian civil servant and diplomat who served as Ghana's ambassador to the Czech Republic from 2017 to 2021. She spent a majority of her professional career in the Ghanaian public service.
Robert Samuel Blay, was a Ghanaian barrister and judge. He was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Ghana during the First Republic. He is often referred to as the first Nzema lawyer. He was president of the Ghana Bar Association on two occasions and also a member of the first board of directors of the Bank of Ghana.
Lebrecht James Nii Tettey Chinery-Hesse, was a Ghanaian lawyer, civil servant and diplomat. He served as a specialist in legislative drafting in the service of Uganda, Ghana, Zambia and Sierra Leone. He is a former Solicitor-General of Ghana and once Acting Attorney General of Ghana.