Shirley Kyei

Shirley Kyei is a Ghanaian mineral resources administrator and politician who serves as the Member of Parliament for the Atwima Nwabiagya South constituency in the Ashanti Region. A member of the New Patriotic Party who won the seat in December 2024 with a commanding majority, she is the first woman ever to win the Atwima Nwabiagya South parliamentary seat and among the youngest MPs to have held the constituency's mandate since Ghana's return to multiparty democracy in 1992.

Professional background

Before entering Parliament, Kyei served as the Deputy Chief Executive of the Minerals Commission of Ghana, the statutory body responsible for regulating and managing the development of Ghana's mineral resources, promoting investment in the mining sector and ensuring compliance with the regulatory framework governing mineral extraction. Her role as Deputy Chief Executive of the Minerals Commission gave her senior executive experience in the governance of Ghana's most economically significant extractive sector, a background with direct relevance to the Ashanti Region where gold mining, artisanal and large-scale, is a defining feature of the economic landscape of many constituencies including those bordering Atwima Nwabiagya South.

2024 election

She won the Atwima Nwabiagya South constituency in December 2024 with 45,352 votes representing 73 per cent of valid ballots, defeating the NDC's Wisdom Osei Boamah who received 17,068 votes representing 27 per cent. Her margin of over 28,000 votes was one of the largest individual majorities in the 2024 election and established her as Atwima Nwabiagya South's strongest-ever electoral winner. Her victory as the first female MP for the constituency, and her status as the youngest person to hold the Atwima Nwabiagya South seat in the era of the Fourth Republic, made the result one of the more celebrated NPP constituency performances of an otherwise nationally difficult election. She assumed office on 7 January 2025.

Political Legacy

Shirley Kyei's Minerals Commission executive career, her historic status as the first female MP for Atwima Nwabiagya South, her record-breaking 73-per-cent majority and her position as the constituency's youngest ever parliamentary representative give her first term a combination of institutional expertise and electoral dominance that few first-term MPs in the Ninth Parliament can match.