Owusu Afriyie Akoto

Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto is an agricultural economist who was Ghana's Minister for Food and Agriculture from 2017 to 2023, leading the Planting for Food and Jobs programme, and represented Kwadaso in Kumasi for the New Patriotic Party (NPP) from 2009 to 2017. He was born on 19 October 1949.

Son of the NLM founder

Afriyie Akoto is the son of Bafuor Osei Akoto, founder and leader of the National Liberation Movement, the pre-independence opposition to Kwame Nkrumah, and a chief linguist at Manhyia Palace. He attended Opoku Ware School and studied agriculture at the University of Ghana, then earned an MSc and a PhD in agricultural economics at the University of Cambridge in 1985.

Coffee economist

He spent more than a decade at the International Coffee Organization in London, rising from economist to chief economic adviser, and advised the World Bank on cocoa, coffee and sugar. Back in Ghana he ran Goldcrest Commodities and Plantation Resources from 1995 to 2008.

Kwadaso and the agriculture ministry

After losing the 2004 primary to Josephine Hilda Addo, he beat her in 2007 and represented Kwadaso for two terms. President Akufo-Addo made him Minister for Food and Agriculture in 2017. He resigned on 10 January 2023 to run for the NPP presidential nomination. Kingsley Nyarko holds Kwadaso today.