Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo

He returned to Ghana in 1962 to teach at the Accra Academy School.

He studied Economics at the University of Ghana, Legon, in 1964, earning a BSc(Econ) degree in 1967.

 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.

He subsequently studied law in the UK and was called to the English Bar (Middle Temple) in July 1971.

Akufo-Addo was called to the Ghana bar in July 1975.

Akufo-Addo stayed in France for five years as a lawyer at the now-defunct New York-based international law firm, Coudert Brothers. In 1975, he returned home to Accra to continue with his legal career. He joined the chambers of U.V. Campbell from 1975 to 1979.

Akufo-Addo worked with the Paris office of the U.S. law firm Coudert Brothers.

He co-founded the law firm Akufo-Addo, Prempeh & Co. Akufo-Addo has served on the boards and committees of a number of political, legal, commercial, and social organizations in the country.

In May 1995, he was among a broad group of elites who formed 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.

Nana Addo was elected three times between 1996 and 2008 as a Member of Parliament for the Abuakwa South constituency in the Eastern Region of Ghana.

In October 1998, Nana Akufo-Addo competed for the presidential candidacy of the NPP and lost to John Agyekum Kufuor, the man who eventually won the presidential election in Ghana in December 2000 and assumed office as President of Ghana in 2001.

Akufo-Addo was the chief campaigner for candidate Kufuor in the 2000 election and became the first Attorney General and Minister for Justice of the Kufuor era. 

Akufo-Addo resigned from the Kufuor government in July 2007 to contest for the position of the presidential candidate of his party, the NPP, the then ruling party of Ghana, for the 2008 elections.

Competing against 16 others, he won 48% of the votes in the first round of that election but was given a unanimous endorsement in the second round, making him the party’s presidential candidate. In the 7 December 2008 presidential race, he received, in the first round, more votes than John Atta Mills, the eventual winner.

Akufo-Addo again contested in the 2012 national elections against the NDC candidate, John Mahama, and lost. That election generated considerable controversy and was finally decided by the Supreme Court in a narrow 5/4 decision in favor of John Mahama.

In March 2014, Akufo-Addo announced his decision to seek his party’s nomination for the third time ahead of the 2016 election. He secured 94.35% of the votes in the party’s presidential primary in October 2014, in a contest of 7 competitors. Akufo-Addo served as Chair of the Commonwealth Observer Mission for the South African elections in 2014.

Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo took office on 7 January 2017 and was inaugurated at the Black Stars Square in Accra. Twelve African and European presidents attended the inauguration including Twelve presidents from African and European countries attended the ceremony, including Edgar Lungu of Zambia, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, Ernest Bai Koroma of Sierra Leone, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria.

He introduced the free senior high school education policy in Ghana, making the senior high school level education free for Ghanaian students.

Nana Addo signed up for re-election by picking a nomination form as flagbearer of the New patriotic party ahead of the 2020 general elections. On 9 December 2020, Nana Addo was declared the winner of the 7 December 2020 Ghana Presidential election after securing a majority of 51.59% of the votes.