Emmanuel Gyimah-Boadi

Professor Emmanuel Gyimah-Boadi (born 2 October 1953) is a Ghanaian political scientist and the co-founder of the Afrobarometer,^[1] a pan-African research project that surveys public attitude on political, social and economic reforms across African countries. He was the CEO of Afrobarometer from 2008 to 2021. He is now the chair of its board of directors.^[2]

He is also founder and former executive director of the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana). A former professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Ghana, Legon, he has held faculty positions at universities in the United States, including the School of International Service of the American University (Washington, D.C.), and fellowships at the Center for Democracy, Rule of Law and Development (Stanford University), the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and the International Forum for Democratic Development (all in Washington, D.C.). He is a fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Democracy. He has sat on advisory councils of numerous International Non-Governmental Organisations around the globe, including the Ibrahim Index of African Governance (London), and International Center for Transitional Justice (New York), the Institute for Integrated Transitions (Barcelona), among others.

He is also a staunch advocate for democracy, the rule of law, and inclusive governance, and has dedicated a lifelong career to capacity building in public opinion survey research on the African continent. In his writings, he has consistently underscored the surprising depth and resilience of citizens’ demand for democracy, and the importance of good governance to sustainable development and democracy in Africa.^[3]

Born on 2 October 1953, in Abirem in the Eastern region of Ghana, Professor Gyimah-Boadi completed his bachelor’s degree at the University of Ghana. He obtained his masters and doctoral degrees in political science at the University of California, Davis. He joined the Political Science Department at the University of Ghana in 1986 and retired in 2014 after nearly three decades of dedicated service. In 1999, he co-founded CDD-Ghana, where he served as executive director till February 2018.

Professor Gyimah-Boadi is a widely cited scholar on democratic politics in Africa. He has published more than a dozen books and monographs, several influential peer-reviewed journal articles, and more than thirty book chapters. According to Google Scholar, Gyimah’s work has been cited over 6,000 times. Some of his best-known works include his co-authored book on Public opinion, democracy, and market reform in Africa (2005, Cambridge University Press) and his edited volume on Democratic Reform in Africa: Quality of Progress (2004, Lynne Rienner). His impact in the field of African Studies is fundamental with his articles on “The Rebirth of African Liberalism” and “Civil Society in Africa” in the Journal of Democracy and the book chapter “Associational Life, Civil Society, and Democratization in Ghana,” helping to shape the field of democracy studies in Africa.

Beyond his academic accomplishments, Gyimah-Boadi is an affable conversationalist, a connoisseur of food and wine, and a jazz lover.