Ken Attafuah

Kenneth Agyeman Attafuah is a lawyer and criminologist who ran the National Identification Authority from 2017 to November 2024 and oversaw the rollout of the Ghana Card. He grew up in the Ashanti Region, the youngest of seven children of farmers who could not read.

He won a place at Prempeh College but could not pay the fees, and went instead to Jachie-Pramso Secondary School, where the boarding house was a converted cocoa shed, and St Peter's Secondary School. He took a degree in sociology, political science and philosophy at the University of Ghana in 1982, a master's at the University of Manitoba and a PhD in criminology at Simon Fraser University in Canada. In Canada he was an adjudicator with the Immigration and Refugee Board and a human rights commissioner in British Columbia.

Back in Ghana he was called to the bar, ran CHRAJ's anti-corruption work and was executive secretary of the National Reconciliation Commission from 2002 to 2004. He also advised the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia, wrote Fighting Armed Robbery in Ghana (2008) and was dean of law at Central University. President Akufo-Addo put him in charge of the NIA in January 2017, where he led the national registration drive for the Ghana Card. He is married to Joyce, and they have four children.