Emmanuel Charles Quist

Sir Emmanuel Charles Quist, known as Paa Quist, was a barrister and judge who was the first African President of the Gold Coast Legislative Council and the first Speaker of the Parliament of Ghana. He was born at Christiansborg in Accra on 21 May 1880 and died on 30 March 1959.

His father was a Basel Mission minister and the family was of Ga and Danish descent. He trained as a teacher-catechist at the Basel Mission seminary at Akropong and was headmaster of the Salem School at Osu, then went into business before studying law at the Middle Temple, where he was called to the bar in 1913. He became the first African Crown Counsel in the Gold Coast, then practised as a defence lawyer, sat on the Accra Town Council and represented the Eastern Province on the Legislative Council from 1934 to 1948.

After a spell as a judge in Cape Coast he became President of the Legislative Council in 1949, Speaker of the National Assembly from 1951, and Speaker of Ghana's first Parliament at independence in March 1957, retiring that November.