John Agyekum Kufuor served as the President of the Republic of Ghana from 2001-2009. During that period there was major structural engineering of the economy through social intervention measures in education, health, and infrastructural development leading to impressive growth rates. Within this same period, he served as the chairman of the regional group – the Economic Community of West African States, overseeing negotiations that brought peace and major post-war reconstruction in Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, and Liberia. Kufuor was also chair of the 53 nation, African Union, from where he continued with peaceful resolutions of conflicts in among others, Kenya, having to set up the eminent committee headed by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Kufuor’s career and public service spans a period of over five decades. Before his presidency in the 1990s, he served as leader of the Opposition, New Patriotic Party, the country’s liberal party which from the 1940s has promoted liberal rule in Ghana; he was in a short period in 1982, Minister for Local Government and earlier between 1979 and1969 respectively, Member of Parliament and at age 30, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1969-72.
Since leaving office in 2009, he joined by invitation, the global elite Club of Madrid of former world leaders; assumed the presidency of the Italian development organization, Alliance for Africa working in health and education sectors on the continent; he has also succeeded Martti Ahtisaari the 2008 Nobel Prize winner for peace and former President of Finland as Chair of the Governing Council of Interpeace, a UN-supported but Geneva-based alliance organization for peace operating in 17 countries around the world. For some time now, he has also been serving as World Food Programme Ambassador of the UN against Hunger and engaged in fieldwork in rural Kenya and Ethiopia advocating modern farming practices and food security policies. Again on the invitation of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, he was one of 10 distinguished global leaders tasked to review the operations of the bank. These are in addition to his membership/directorship of boards including the Netherlands Development Cooperation, Brenthurst Foundation of South Africa, and Leon Sullivan Foundation in the United States.
For these and others before, he was awarded the Chatham House Prize for good leadership by the leading European think-tank, Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, the Knight Commander of the Order of Bath by Queen Elizabeth II, given Germany’s highest national award of Bundesverskkreuz by former President Horst Kohler, Order of the House of Orange, conferred by Her Majesty Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Distinction of Grand Cordon in the Most Venerable Order of the Knighthood of the Pioneers of the Republic of Liberia by President Johnson Sirleaf for helping to end the civil war in that country and, the World Federation of Honorary Consuls Order of the Gold Star.
Among many of such honors, Kufuor who has since 2009 travelled across the globe as resource advisor and speaker on behalf of multilateral institutions including the UN agencies, UNESCO, UNDP and others, has received honors from as far as Brazil and Japan and honorary academic doctorate degrees from Exeter College, University of Oxford, John Moores University in Liverpool, Britain, Honorary Bencher, Lincoln’s Inn, Inje University in Seoul, Korea, Cape Coast University in Ghana and was together with former Civil Rights Leader, Ambassador Andrew Young given honorary doctorate degrees by the Bells University of Technology, Ota State in Nigeria.
Born in Kumasi on December 8, 1938, Kufuor studied and has an MA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from the University of Oxford and was also called to the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn.
He is married to Theresa Kufuor and they have five grown-up children.
