﻿Who is Nana Akufo Addo?
Despite its small size and population, Ghana is one of Africa's most advanced nations. Ghana
is a West African country located on the Gulf of Guinea's coast. It was the first black African
country south of the Sahara to be independent of colonial rule. Ghana is one of Africa's oldest
democracies, with a history of free elections and government changes between the major political
parties. When it comes to governance, Ghana's current president, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo,
has implemented several policies that are helping to grow the country's economy.
This is not surprising given that he centred his campaign on the economy, promising to stabilise
the country's foreign exchange rate and reduce unemployment. On behalf of the people of Ghana,
he received the Africa-America Institute's National Achievement Award in 2017. The award
was given to honour Ghana as a country that stands for African freedom, democracy, and stability.
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Ghana's long-serving head of state Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is a politician and a lawyer.
Nana Akufo-Addo was born on March 29, 1944, in Accra, Ghana, to Edward and Adeline Akufo-Addo. In
Accra, he attended the Government Boys School and then Rowe Road School for his primary education.
He later completed his secondary education at Lancing College in the United Kingdom between 1957
and 1961, after which he returned to Ghana. In 1964, he enrolled at the University of Ghana,
where he graduated in 1967 with a bachelor's degree in economics.
Akufo-Addo returned to the United Kingdom to study law and was called to the bar in England (Middle
Temple) in 1971 and in Ghana in 1975. From 1971 to 1975, he worked in the Paris office of the
American law firm Coudert Brothers. He then returned to Ghana and worked in the law firm
of U.V. Campbell from 1975 to 1979. In 1979, he cofounded the law firm Akufo-Addo, Prempeh & Co.
Akufo-participation Addo's in politics formally began in the late 1970s when
he joined the People's Movement for Freedom and Justice (PMFJ), an organisation formed
to protest the General Acheampong-led Supreme Military Council's Union Government proposals.
Akufo-Addo has been a defender of democracy in Ghana. In the 1990s, he founded Ghana's
Committee on Human and People's Rights. In 1992, he founded and funded The Statesman newspaper,
which has become the NPP's unofficial mouthpiece. In May 1995, he led the Alliance For Change (AFC)
movement's "Kume Preko" demonstrations against neoliberal policies such as the introduction
of Value Added Tax and human rights violations during the Rawlings presidency. While serving
as Attorney General, he worked to repeal the Criminal Libel Law,
and as President of Ghana, he successfully signed the Right to Information Bill,
which had been before the Ghanaian Parliament for two decades. He served in the 2nd, 3rd,
and 4th parliaments of the 4th republic, representing the Abuakwa Constituency.
He was the first Chairperson of DHL Ghana Limited and previously served three terms
as a Member of Parliament between 1996 and 2008. In the 1996 elections, he received 28,526 votes
out of the 50,263 valid votes cast, representing 56.75 percent of the vote, over Owuraku Amofa,
who received 20,173 votes, Adoo-Aikins, who received 705 votes, Ahmadu Rufai,
who received 682 votes, and Emmanuel Kofi Tamakloe, who received 177 votes.
In October 1998, Akufo-Addo ran for the NPP presidential nomination but was defeated by
John Kufuor, who went on to win the December 2000 presidential election and become Ghana's President
in January 2001. In the 2000 election, Akufo-Addo was Kufuor's chief campaigner. Under the Kufuor
administration, he served as Attorney General from 2001 to 2003 and as Minister of Foreign
Affairs from 2003 to 2007. As Foreign Minister, he was fully involved in the successful ECOWAS peace
efforts in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, and Guinea Bissau, and he served as the organization's
chairman in 2003. Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo currently serves on the High-Level Panel on
the Oceans and co-chairs the SDGs Eminent Advocates Group, which has 17 members.
Akufo-Addo ran for president for the first time in 2008, and again in 2012, both times as the
candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP). He was defeated both times by candidates from the
National Democratic Congress: John Evans Atta Mills in 2008 and John Dramani Mahama in 2012.
He was chosen as the New Patriotic Party's presidential candidate for the third time in
the 2016 general elections, and he defeated Mahama this time. He was elected President of Ghana in
January 2017, defeating his opponent in the first round, making him the first candidate to win an
outright majority in a Ghanaian presidential election. He was re-elected for a second term in
2020, which will end on January 6, 2025. Flagstaff House's current resident (Ghana's President)
has the support of his predecessor, who urged Ghanaians to unite behind the head of state and
to continue working for economic and social development. Ghana's image on the African
continent has been enhanced by the transparent election of Akufo-Addo and the peaceful transition
of power. One of the continent's most successful democracies can be found in the country.
He is married to Rebecca Akufo-Addo (née Griffiths-Randolph), the daughter of Judge
Jacob Hackenburg Griffiths-Randolph, who served as Speaker of Ghana's Parliament
during the Third Republic. Gyankroma Funmi Akufo-Addo, Edwina Nana Douka Akufo-Addo,
Adriana Dukua Akufo-Addo, Yeboakua Akufo-Addo,
and Valerie Obaze are their five daughters. Akufo-Addo had inherited economic problems,
partly due to a depression of global prices on Ghana’s key commodities, burgeoning public wage
costs, and increasing debt. At his inauguration, President Akufo-Addo vowed to put Ghana on a "new
path of progress and prosperity" during his term in office. In the first year of his presidency,
he made good on one of the most prominent promises he had made during his campaign: he initiated a
plan to establish a manufacturing facility in each of the nation's more than 200 districts.
Students in Ghana will not have to pay for the cost of secondary education after the country's
president introduced a policy in September 2017 called Free Senior High School (SHS). It
is a "necessary investment in the nation's future workforce," according to the president,
and it will help parents who are unable to pay for their children's education due to financial
difficulties. The programme was met with a positive reaction from the nation as a whole;
parents and students were excited and fervent about the programme. However, private schools
that are opposed to the programme state that it will decrease the number of students enrolling in
their system. There has been a steady increase over the years in the number of testimonies
that have been received from parents and students regarding how the Free SHS policy has had a
profound and positive effect on their lives. The seven-year Co-ordinated Programme of
Economic and Social Development Policies was introduced by the president in 2018,
and its primary goal is to increase employment opportunities across the nation. According to
the president, the policies are founded on "five pillars of growth and development,
which are, respectively, revitalising the economy, transforming agriculture and industry, revamping
economic and social infrastructure, strengthening social protection and inclusion, and reforming the
delivery system of public services institutions." As of the year 2019, the number of regions in
Ghana has increased from ten to sixteen under the administration of the country's
president. Oti, Western North, North East, Savannah, and Bono East are the names of
the new regions that were created after Ahafo was separated from Brong. The establishment of
the regions puts an end to decades' worth of petitions presented to the government
requesting the formation of additional regions. In the year 2020, he gave his signature to the
UNAIDS Public Letter on People's Vaccine, which was a campaign that demanded that the
COVID-19 vaccine be made available to everyone. He participated in the signing alongside other
world leaders. He stated in his writing that "all people everywhere must have access to the vaccine
once one is available." Concerns were raised that people in wealthier countries
may have quicker access to the vaccine than people in poorer countries. As a result, an open letter
was written advocating that any vaccine against the disease should be free and made available to
all people at no cost. Ghana made history when it became the first nation on the African continent
to receive COVID-19 vaccines as part of the COVAX programme run by the World Health Organization
in February 2021. The shipment included a total of 600,000 doses
of vaccines manufactured by AstraZeneca. The President’s hard work, patriotic contributions
and numerous policy interventions from the creation of over 350,000 public sector jobs,
reduction in the cost of electricity, reduction of import duties by 50 per cent, restoration of
nursing and teacher trainee allowances, free Senior High School Policy, among others has
truly contributed to alleviating the suffering of Ghanaian workers. He is Ghana's ideal leader
and he is trusted to do more for his nation. Political analyst Kwame Danso Acheampong remarks
that Akufo-Addo would have to do more in the coming months
to fulfil the high expectations among Ghanaians and there is utmost confidence that his regime can
do it.