Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo ( born 29 March 1944) is a Ghanaian politician who has served as the president of Ghana since 7 January 2017. In 2020, he was re-elected for his second term, which will end on 6 January 2025. Akufo-Addo previously served as Attorney General from 2001 to 2003 and as Minister for Foreign Affairs from 2003 to 2007 under the Kufuor-led administration. He is currently serving his second term as the chairman of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
Akufo-Addo first ran for president in 2008 and again in 2012, both times as the candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP). He lost to National Democratic Congress candidates on both occasions national national national National Democratic Congress candidates: John Evans Atta Mills in 2008 and John Dramani Mahama in 2012. After the 2012 general elections, he refused to concede and proceeded to court to challenge the electoral results, but the Supreme Court of Ghana affirmed Mahama’s victory.
He was chosen as the presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party for the third time in the 2016 general elections, and this time, he defeated incumbent Mahama in the first round (winning with 53.85% of the votes), which marked the first time in a Ghanaian presidential election that an opposition candidate won a majority outright in the first round. It was also the first time that an opposition candidate had unseated an incumbent president.
He again secured an outright majority in the first round of the 2020 general elections (winning with 51.59% of the vote), defeating Mahama a second time, and was sworn in at exactly 1:03 pm GMT on 7 January 2021.
In December 2021, Nana-Akufo Addo pledged to respect the two-term limit mandated in the Ghanaian constitution and not run for a third term in 2024.
Early life and education
Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo was born in Swalaba Accra, Ghana, on 29 March 1944, to a prominent Ghanaian royal and political family as the son of Adeline and Edward Akufo-Addo.[14][15] His father Edward Akufo-Addo from Akropong-Akuapem was Ghana’s third Chief Justice from 1966 to 1970, chairman of the 1967–68 Constitutional Commission, and the non-executive President of Ghana from 1970 to 1972. Akufo-Addo’s maternal grandfather was Nana Sir Ofori Atta, King of Akyem Abuakwa, who was a member of the Executive Council of the Governor of the Gold Coast before Ghana’s independence. He is a nephew of Kofi Asante Ofori-Atta and William Ofori Atta. His granduncle was J. B. Danquah, another member of The Big Six.
He started his primary education at the Government Boys School, Adabraka, and later went to Kinbu, in Accra Central. He went to England to study for his O-Level and A-Level examinations at Lancing College, Sussex, where he was nicknamed ‘Billy’ and joined the Anglican faith. He began the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics course at New College, Oxford in 1962, but left soon afterward. He returned to Ghana in 1962 to teach at the Accra Academy, before going to read economics at the University of Ghana, Legon, in 1964, earning a BSc (Econ) degree in 1967 with a third class. He subsequently joined Middle Temple and trained as a lawyer under the apprenticeship system known as the Inns of Court, where no formal law degree was required. He was called to the English Bar (Middle Temple) in July 1971. He was called to the Ghanaian bar in July 1975.[19] Akufo-Addo worked with the Paris office of the U.S. law firm Coudert Brothers. In 1979, he co-founded the law firm Prempeh and Co.
Political life
Though known by his friends to have been a vocal supporter of the Convention People’s Party (CPP) while a student at the University of Ghana, he switched sides to the rival UP tradition following the overthrow of President Nkrumah in 1966 after which his father, Edward Akufo-Addo became ceremonial president of Ghana in 1969. Akufo-Addo’s participation in politics formally began in the late 1970s when he joined the People’s Movement for Freedom and Justice (PMFJ), an organization formed to oppose the General Acheampong-led Supreme Military Council’s Union Government proposals. In May 1995, he was among a broad group of elites who formed the Alliance for Change, an alliance that organized demonstrations against neo-liberal policies such as the introduction of Value Added Tax and human rights violations of the Rawlings presidency. At the forefront of this demonstration were himself, Abdul Malik Kwaku Baako and Saifullah Senior minister Victor Newman, Kwasi Pratt Jnr, Dr. Charles Wreko Brobbey among others. They were joined by about 100,000 other people. The protest was named “Kumepreko“. The broad-based opposition alliance later collapsed as the elite leaders jostled for leadership positions. In the 1990s, he formed a civil rights organization called Ghana’s Committee on Human and People’s Rights.
He was a member of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th parliament of the 4th republic representing the Abuakwa Constituency.
in the 1996 elections, he polled 28,526 votes out of the 50,263 valid votes cast representing 56.75% over Owuraku Amofa who polled 20,173 votes, Adoo-Aikins who polled 705 votes, Ahmadu Rufai who polled 682 votes and Emmanuel Kofi Tamakloe who polled 177 votes. He won again in the 2000 General Elections with 28,633 votes out of the 45,795 valid votes cast representing 62.50% over Christiana Annor who polled 14,486 votes, Addo-Aikins who polled 1.088 votes, Theresa Stella Amakye who polled 593 votes, Kofi Opoku-Gyamera who polled 519 votes and Isaac Duodu Awah who also polled 506 votes.
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