Obed Asamoah

Dr Obed Yao Asamoah is a lawyer and academic who was Ghana's longest-serving Foreign Minister and Attorney-General, under Jerry Rawlings from 1981 to 1997. He was born at Bala in the Likpe traditional area on 6 February 1936.

He went to Achimota School, where he befriended Kojo Tsikata, and studied law at King's College London, being called to the bar at the Middle Temple. He then earned an LLM and a doctorate in law at Columbia University in 1967. He taught law at the University of Ghana, where his students included John Atta Mills, Tsatsu Tsikata and Nana Akufo-Addo, before joining the practice Bruce-Lyle, Bannerman and Asamoah.

He sat in the 1968 Constituent Assembly and was MP for Biakoye from 1969 to 1972 for the National Alliance of Liberals. Under the PNDC and the NDC government he served as Foreign Secretary and Attorney-General, and later chaired the NDC. He left the party after a leadership dispute and in 2006 founded the Democratic Freedom Party.