HR Ahmad*
What a man walked on this planet, leaving behind genes, love, and a unique legacy of the Aga Khan Development Network. He was invited to his office of responsibility in 1957. He unfolded his creative energy in 1967. His AKDN Model reached the predictive maturity like a space-time singularity of Big Bang, handling both worldly and faith affairs. AKDN became globally recognised as a civil society enabler by developing people through education and institutions to a nation-state. AKDN was a ship sailing through the rough seas of the Cold War, Afghan War and Iraq War. It started to buffer the region with one of the offshoots of AKDN namely Aga Khan Hospital and Medical College Foundation in 1983. The University Charter was granted by the then President of Pakistan to the Chancellor Prince Karim Aga Khan at the new campus inauguration ceremony in Karachi 1985. It was the first medical college in South Asia to have started with a full-fledged PhD faculty in Basic Health Sciences under the founding Dean Cheves Smyth and CW Vellani as the First Faculty.
Shams Kassim-Lakha was invited as a President by the Chancellor to take the administrative lead of the Aga Khan Medical Centre. Now, Aga Khan University has a history of 40 years of development and expansion over the globe with the vision and mission of the chancellor as a role model leadership to serve people. The founding Chancellor has gifted us a legacy of enlightenment. We now need to hold fast the rope to establish his ever-emphasised civil people’s society model through education-based institutions with hallmarks of pluralism, inclusivity and public service.
We stand with his family at this moment of separation from the Chancellor Prince Karim Aga Khan with tears of gratitude.
- HR Ahmad
AKU: 7th February 2025
