William Agyapong

Lieutenant General William Agyapong is the Chief of the Defence Staff of the Ghana Armed Forces. President John Mahama appointed him on 24 March 2025, promoting him to major general the same day, in place of Lieutenant General Thomas Oppong-Peprah. An infantry officer and chartered accountant, he had led Operation Vanguard, the military task force against illegal mining, in 2017.

Education

Agyapong attended Effiduase Secondary Commercial School in the Ashanti Region and Tema Secondary School. He is a chartered accountant and a member of ACCA, with a Master of Science in professional accountancy from the University of London, a Master of Arts in international security and strategy from King's College London, and a diploma in forensic accounting.

Army career

He joined the Ghana Army in November 1988 and was commissioned into the infantry in August 1990. He served on peacekeeping missions with ECOMOG, ECOMIG, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), and taught on the defence management course at the Ghana Armed Forces Command and Staff College.

In July 2017, as a colonel, he was put in command of Operation Vanguard, the joint military and police task force deployed against galamsey, and led it until December 2017. From 2013 to 2016 he was a strategic planner at the UN Secretariat in New York, and from 2023 he was military adviser to Ghana's Permanent Representative to the United Nations.

Chief of the Defence Staff

He took over as Chief of the Defence Staff on 24 March 2025 and has since been promoted to lieutenant general. Avance Media listed him on its inaugural Top 100 Ghanaians Powerlist in 2025.