Ivor Agyeman-Duah is a Ghanaian academic, economist, writer, editor and film director. He has worked in Ghana's diplomatic service and has served as an advisor on development policy.
Biography
Ivor Agyeman-Duah was born in Kumasi, Ghana, in 1966, and was named after his father's good friend, the British historian Ivor Wilks. Agyeman-Duah holds an MA degree from the University of Wales and an MSc in Economic Development from The School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He is the founder and Director of the Centre for Intellectual Renewal, a public organization in Ghana. From 2009 to 2014 he was special advisor to the President John Agyekum Kufuor on international development cooperation, and in this capacity worked with the World Food Programme in Kenya and Ethiopia and the Geneva-based international peacebuilding organization Interpeace. He has done work for the World Bank and World Bank Institute in Washington, DC. Agyeman-Duah was formerly head of Public Affairs at the Ghana Embassy in Washington, DC, and later Culture and Communication Advisor at the Ghana High Commission in London, and has been a consulting fellow of the African Center for Economic Transformation. He has also held fellowships at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University and been a Hilary and Trinity resident scholar at Exeter College, Oxford. Also active in literary and cultural fields, Agyeman-Duah has edited many publications, serves as Development Policy Advisor for the Lagos-based Lumina Foundation, which established the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa, and he was the 2014–15 Chair of the Literature Jury of the Millennium Excellence Foundation. He wrote, co-directed and produced two television documentary films – Yaa Asantewaa: The Exile of King Prempeh and the Heroism of an African Queen, premiered in Ghana in 2001, and The Return of a King to Seychelles, which was shown at Chatham House in 2015 – and Agyeman-Duah was also historical consultant to Margaret Busby's 2001 theatrical production about Yaa Asantewaa.
Publications
Between Faith & History, Vols 1, 2 & 3: A Biography of J. A. Kufuor, 2007.
Pilgrims of the Night: Developmental Challenges and Opportunities in Africa, 2011.
As editor
The Asante Monarchy in Exile: Sojourn of King Prempeh I and Nana Yaa Asantewaa in Seychelles, 2000.