[4][5][6][7][8][9] A resident of the Gold Coast from 1832 to 1845, Riis played a critical role in the recruitment of 24 West Indian missionaries from Jamaica and Antigua in 1843 to aid the work of the mission in formal education, agriculture and the propagation of the Gospel in colonial Ghana.

[4][5][9] Historians have described the town as one in which inhabitants had a strong work-ethic and missionary interests, in line with the Württemberg Pietism of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, inspired by German theologians Philipp Spenern and August Hermann Francke.

[15] In Pietist towns and villages, a traditional rural lifestyle was commonplace as were the local production and supply of food and occupations in the crafts such as carpentry, welding and blacksmithing.

[4][5] Although Riis did not have much prior exposure to formal education, he easily received an admission offer based on his bilingualism in German and Danish, his conviction, work ethic, sense of purpose and determination – values conveyed in his application essay.

He studied for almost five years at the training school and was consecrated a missionary at the Basel Minster in 1832 and shortly thereafter ordained a minister at a Lutheran church in Lörrach in Baden, Germany.

[4][5] After becoming ill from tropical fever two months later, Riis sought treatment with the Danish doctor at Christiansborg, Dr. Tietz but his condition worsened each day for the next week.

[4][5] The healing process consisted of washing the body with soap, lemon and cold water and drinking a boiled potion containing naturally occurring quinine from tree bark, which proved to be quite effective.

Riis' decision to visit the traditional healer for his medication was considered an "abomination" by Westerners at the time due to misconceptions about the local culture which they perceived as "heathenism".

[4][5] Lutterodt then advised Riis to move to the more isolated woody hilly countryside in Akropong – Akuapem where the climate is much cooler and had a more conducive environment for evangelisation to due to a lack of acculturation in comparison to coastal towns.

[18] Moerck also meddled in Akuapem state politics, including a chieftaincy dispute between the Akwapem and the Guan, fearing the growing influence of the British in that area.

[4][5][24] After consultation with his traditional elders and fetish priests, the paramount chieftain, Addo Dankwa gave land to Andreas Riis to set up a mission station.

[4][5] Riis built his solid timber house on stone foundation, almost entirely on his own as he refused to pay the Akropong natives in kind with brandy or gin.

[4][5] In his role as an amateur naturalist and experimental ethnologist, Andreas Riis wrote several ethnographic and cartographic extracts on the natural landscape and cultural observations situated against his own European upbringing and experience.

[4][5][19] In 1840, Andreas Riis, travelled through Akwamu, Shai, Kroboland, Akim Abuakwa, and Cape Coast and around New Year, arrived in the Ashanti capital, Kumasi where he spent two weeks and wrote observations on the traditional society there and what he perceived as the unfavourable and grim prospects for mission work.

[8][11] A similar idea had been passed on by English missions in London to Basel but the final decision on West Indian recruitment was motivated by the chief's message to Riis.

[6][19] Andreas Riis, his wife, Anna Wolter, Widmann and Thompson left Basel for the British leeward island of Antigua in the West Indies with a transit in Liverpool to select mission recruits.

[19][23] In a metaphor of the Biblical Joseph story, a team of 24 Jamaicans and one Antiguan (6 distinct families and 3 bachelors) sailed from the Jamaican Port of Kingston on 8 February 1843 aboard the Irish brigantine, The Joseph Anderson, rented for £600, and according to differing narratives, arrived in Christiansborg, Gold Coast on Easter Sunday, 16 April or Easter Monday, 17 April 1843 at about 8 p.m. local time, GMT after sixty-eight days and nights of voyage, enduring a five-day tropical storm on the Caribbean sea, shortage of fresh water and an oppressive heat aboard the vessel.

Other tropical seedlings brought by the West Indian missionaries include cocoa, coffee, breadnut, breadfruit, guava, yam, cassava, plantains, cocoyam, banana and pear.

Riis and another Basel missionary, Simon Süss were forced by the situation to trade and barter in order to get money to buy food and other needs of his expanding mission staff and local workers.

"[4][5][7] Yet, he intensely disliked the patriarchal hierarchy of the Basel Mission Home Committee whose members he described as "armchair evangelists" without any knowledge of missionary field work.

[6][26][29] Due to fraught interpersonal relations with his missionary colleagues and locals, "the Home Committee requested a general summation of Riis' practices on the Gold Coast.

In a report dated 13 December 1846, Schiedt stated that "Riis never acknowledges any fault – he cannot stand contradictions –he neglects his proper missionary work, even with his own houseboy.

"[7] Schiedt, nonetheless, was also dismissed from the Gold Coast mission later for separate offences – multiple accusations of character assassination, habitual lateness, crudeness, insufficient piety, disparaging the Home Committee and threatening to become a Methodist.

His other charges "included were accusations of mismanagement of Mission property, associated with a 'debauched' chaplain in the Danish settlement in Christiansborg, refusing legitimate orders from his superiors, and misappropriating the mail of his fellow missionaries, thus interfering with the lines of communication between the Committee and the field.

[7] Johann Georg Widmann on the other hand counter-accused Halleur of nurturing a deep hatred against Riis and having an attitude that made him extremely difficult to work with.

[4][5][7][8][11] In August 1845, the Home Committee recalled Andreas Riis and his wife Anna Wolters to Basel so he could be afforded a fair hearing before a panel of missionaries responsible for enforcing discipline.

[4][5][7] In 1846, the jury gave its verdict which was to revoke Riis' appointment to the Gold Coast and force his resignation from the Basel Mission, on grounds of deteriorating physical and mental health.

[4][5][7][8][11] As per archival records, the Home Committee later paid Riis his pension regularly in acknowledgment of his twelve-year service to the society and as the main driver of Basel Mission activity on the Gold Coast.

[7] Framed as a tragic character and what Jon Miller called a "strategic deviant", Riis' complex legacy is connected to his personal traits: charisma, Pietist strength, stamina, audacity, persuasion, imagination, ingenuity, strong will, persistence or tenacity to survive on the Gold Coast leading to the endurance of the Basel mission, in spite of difficulties encountered in the early years, including loneliness in a faraway land, alienation from his colleagues, the loss of his entire nuclear family to disease and external circumstances pertaining to inter-ethnic conflict.

[6][11] This eventually led to the establishment of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana and its pioneering role in the development of formal education, mechanised agriculture, infrastructure, modern healthcare and the expansion of economic opportunities for the native people of the Gold Coast through commerce and industry in the arts and crafts over a ninety-year period, between 1828 and 1918.