The United States embassy in Ghana has wished President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo the best in life and in office as he celebrates his 75th birthday on Friday, 29 March 2019.
The embassy, in a tweet, said: “Happy 75th birthday to the President of Ghana, @NAkufoAddo. We wish you the very best on this special day.”
The president is married to Rebecca Akufo-Addo, the daughter of judge Jacob Hackenburg Griffiths-Randolph, the Speaker of the Parliament of Ghana during the Third Republic. They have three daughters; Gyankroma Funmi Akufo-Addo, Edwina Nana Douka Akufo-Addo and Valerie Obaze.
Mr Akufo-Addo has been in office since January 2017. He previously served as Attorney General from 2001 to 2003 and as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2003 to 2007 under the Kufuor administration.
Nana Akufo-Addo first ran for president in 2008 and again in 2012, both times as the candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), but was defeated on both occasions by National Democratic Congress candidates John Evans Atta Mills in 2008 and John Dramani Mahama in 2012 after Prof Mills’ death.
He was chosen as the presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party for the third time for the 2016 general elections, and this time, he managed to defeat John Dramani 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.
Mr Akufo-Addo was born in Accra, Ghana, to a prominent Ghanaian royal and political family as the son of Edward and Adeline Akufo-Addo. 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 till 1972. Mr 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 at the Rowe Road School (now Kinbu), both 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’. He began the Philosophy, Politics and Economics course at New College, Oxford in 1962, but left soon afterwards. 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.
He subsequently joined Inner 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.] 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.
Source: Ghana/ClassFMonline.com
