The mission of Ashesi University is to educate ethical, entrepreneurial leaders in Africa; to cultivate within students the critical thinking skills, the concern for others, and the courage it will take to transform the continent.

[2] Ashesi was established as an independent, public benefit education institution operating on a not-for-profit basis.

[11] In 2018, it received a charter from the president of Ghana, allowing it to grant degrees in its own name instead of that of the University of Cape Coast.

Groundwater is supplemented with harvested rainwater, filtered and treated to provide potable water all year round.

A community-scale sewage and organic treatment plant provides environmental and economic benefits by converting waste to biogas for some of the campus' cooking needs and recycling treated water for landscaping.

[22] Ashesi offers a four-year bachelor programme grounded in a multidisciplinary core curriculum, featuring majors in business administration, management information systems, computer science, electrical and electronic engineering, computer engineering, mechanical engineering and LLB in law with public policy It runs Ashesi Innovation Experience, a two-week programme which exposes students between the ages of 15 and 19 to Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Robotics, Creativity and Engineering basics to help prepare them for transitioning into college,[23] and oversees the curriculum development for the Next Generation Cocoa Youth Programme.

[25][26] It was ranked as one of Ghana's 50 Best Places to work by Ghanaian consulting firm Goodman AMC in 2015; it was again the only university on the list.