David Asante  David Asante (23 December 1834 – 13 October 1892) was a philologist, linguist, translator and the first Akan native missionary of the Basel Evangelical Missionary Society. He was the second African to be educated in Europe by the Basel Mission after the Americo-Liberian pastor, George Peter Thompson. Asante worked closely with the German missionary and philologist, Johann Gottlieb Christaller and fellow native linguists, Theophilus Opoku, Jonathan Palmer Bekoe, and Paul Staudt Keteku in the translation of the Bible into the Twi language. David Asante was born on 23 December 1834 at Akropong-Akuapem, capital of Akuapem, a state 30 miles (48 km) northeast of Accra. His father was Nana Owusu Akyem of the ruling Asona clan and direct cousin of the then Okuapehene, Nana Adum Tokori. Asante's father was a personal friend of Andreas Riis, the Danish minister and first Basel missionary-survivor on the Gold Coast. David Asante's cousin was his fellow linguist, Theophilus Opoku. As a child, he began his formal education when his father gave him to the Basel missionary, Johann G. Widmann as a houseboy and year later, he was sent to J. C. Dieterle to become a personal assistant in his household. He learnt English during his time with the two missionaries who described him as hardworking and bright. On 25 December 1847, David Asante was baptised by a Basel missionary and became one of the first converts to Christianity in his hometown. By his own account, he had his conversion experience during a singing exercise at school when he sang the hymn, "“Come ye sinners, poor and needy.”" by the American composer, Ira D. Sankey. A few months earlier, he had witnessed the conversion of two labourers, Anum and Tettey at Osu on Pentecost Sunday. These two experiences had a profound effect on Asante, leading to his conversion, which ultimately created a rift between him and his mother who saw the whole episode as sacrilege. In 1848 he was among five students in the pioneer class of the newly opened Basel Mission Seminary at Akropong, for a five-year course training as a teacher-catechist and becoming proficient in German, Greek, Latin, and Hebrew.