Daniel Ohene Agyekum, a political insider who is no stranger to controversy, has been the ambassador to the United States from Ghana since October 19, 2009. 

 

Born March 10, 1942, at Juaso in the Ashanti Region of Ghana, which was then a British colony, Agyekum attended primary school in Juaso. He attained his G.C.E. Ordinary Level in 1960 and Advanced level in 1962 at Achimota School. Ohene Agyekum earned a B.A. in History from the University of Ghana, Legon, in 1965 and joined the Ghana Foreign Service the same year. In 1966, he obtained a post-graduate diploma in Public Administration at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration; as part of his diplomatic training, and he earned an International Certificate in Diplomacy in 1970 at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. 

 

Shortly after the coup that deposed President Kwame Nkrumah in 1966, Ohene Agyekum was sent to his home region of Ashanti to serve as a District Administrative Officer, a position he held until 1969. 

 

Six years after joining the Foreign Service, Ohene Agyekum received his first diplomatic posting, to Tel Aviv, Israel, where he served from 1971 to 1974. He also served in the Ghana Embassy in Copenhagen, Denmark, from 1976 to 1981. After returning to Accra in 1981, he served as Deputy Director for the Middle East and Asia Divisions of the Foreign Affairs Ministry until 1982, when he was assigned by the Ministry to the Provisional National Defence Council as Advisor on International Relations. He was subsequently appointed Acting Eastern Regional Secretary from 1983 to 1986. 

 

In December 1986, he was appointed Ghana’s High Commissioner (ambassador) to Canada, where he served for six years, until 1992. During his tenure in Ottawa, he led Ghana’s delegation in negotiations leading to the adoption of the Montreal Protocol on the Substances that deplete the Ozone Layer, held in September 1987. 

 

Ohene Agyekum has also had an active political career in Ghana’s National Democratic Congress Party (NDC), beginning in earnest in April 1992, when he was appointed Acting NDC Ashanti Regional Secretary. At that time, President Jerry Rawlings of the NDC, who had taken power in a 1981 coup, promulgated a new constitution restoring multi-party politics, and was elected president. Rawlings was reelected in 1996. Ohene Agyekum served as a minister in the NDC Government starting in 1993. Between 1996 and November1998, he served as Ashanti Regional Minister and from November 1998 through December 1999 as Greater Accra Regional Minister. He then spent a year as Minister of Chieftaincy Affairs and State Protocol.

 

 In 2001, Ohene Agyekum contested and won the position of Regional NDC Party Chairman for the Ashanti Region of Ghana. Known as a formidable political campaigner, especially in his home region of Ashanti, Ohene Agyekum in 2008 accused members of the opposition National Patriotic Party (NPP) of falsely alleging that NDC partisans had recently attacked NPP followers, and invoked the river god “Antoa Nyama” to kill the NPP members who helped spread the story. He later claimed that politicos of both parties invoke the god from time to time, the only difference being that he had done so openly. 

 

A potentially more serious controversy erupted in May 2011, when Ohene Agyekum was accused of having purchased several valuable tracts of land in Virginia, a claim he has denied.   

 

Ohene Agyekum and his wife, Rose, have five children.

--Matt Bewig

 

Government Appointees Buying Houses in The USA (by Edward Thomas, African Standard)

Ambassador Ohene Agyekum Denies Owning US Property (by Martin Asiedu-Dartey, Citifmonline)