Professor Francis Dodoo is a celebrated scholar, development practitioner and advocate of the critical need for Africans to own and drive the continent’s development destiny. He occupies a distinguished research chair at The Pennsylvania State University in the USA and recently completed his tenure as the Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research, Innovation and Development at the University of Ghana in 2019. Between 2009 and 2012, he was the advisor to the President of Ghana, Professor John Evans Atta Mills, on Social and Development Issues. He has served as chair of various public sector boards including the Ghana Statistical Services; the Export Development and Agricultural Investment Fund (EDAIF), now evolved into the Ghana EXIM Bank; and Ghana’s Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC), which leads the fight against money laundering. Professor Dodoo is credited with bringing accountability, professionalism and excellence in these institutions. Professor Dodoo is also an accomplished athlete, having competed in four Olympic Games between 1984 and 1996, and he still holds the African Games triple jump record he set 32 years ago in Nairobi in 1987. He has been President of the Ghana Olympic Committee (GOC) and of Ghana Athletics (GAA), and a member of the International Association of Athletics Federations’ (IAAF) Values Commission, the Commonwealth Games Federation’s (CGF) Governance and Integrity Committee, and the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) Athletes Commission. Professor Dodoo has an impeccable track record of building and transforming academic and research institutions across Africa including, most recently, restructuring the University of Ghana’s Office of Research, Innovation and Development (ORID), and growing its research funding portfolio by over 1,200 per cent to $42.5 million between 2016 and 2019. He has over 70 journal publications and leads numerous research programmes. He earned his PhD in Demography from the University of Pennsylvania in 1988 and has also served as a professor at Tulane University, Vanderbilt University, University of Maryland, and the University of Ghana.

• published: 20 Dec 2019
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