Howard University offensive tackle Anim Dankwah has punched his ticket to the NFL Combine.
Anim Dankwah is a 6’8, 362 pound tackle that hails from Ghana. His story was documented by HBCU Gameday’s Jacobi Simmons in 2021. Dankwah told us how his mother taught him English, giving him a leg up in school.
“Back then my mom was really good with school so she could really teach me a lot. Unlike most of my friends around, I knew how to speak English really early. My mom taught me how to read, write and do math,” Dankwah said. “I was really good in school so it wasn’t hard for my mom to ask my teachers ‘Hey you guys have to take my son in’ so he can keep coming.”
Dankwah eventually moved to Canada with his father, where he was approached to play football.
“So they [St. Roch] had something called the ‘get ready program’ for all the freshmen to come and get acquainted with the school. The first thing we had to do was a scavenger hunt where we had to find certain rooms in the school,” Dankwah expressed. “One of the rooms I had to find was the athletic room, so boom one of the coaches sees me and says ‘You ever thought about playing football’ but I don’t know what football is. ‘You’re big enough so you should come and try out.’”
From there, Dankwah ended up at Howard University. And the rest is history.
Dankwah was named to the MEAC All-Conference Second Team and the Phil Steele FCS All-MEAC Third Team in his junior year. During the 2022 season, Dankwah was the Shrine Bowl HBCU Offensive Player of the Week and played a crucial role in helping Howard University secure a share of the MEAC regular season championship.He helped Howard bring home the 2023 MEAC title – the program’s first outright MEAC title since 1993.
Now he will head to Indianapolis for the NFL Combine. A good performance there could set him up to get picked in the 2023 NFL Draft.