His Excellency John Mahama, the former president of Ghana (2012 – 2017), will deliver a lecture on the current status of democracy in Africa, in light of the recent coup d’états in Burkina Faso, Niger and Gabon. Earlier this year, Mahama announced his plans to run for president in the 2024 election. The event will be held on October 27 from 2 – 4 p.m. in 131 Hitchcock Hall, and is supported by the Center for African Studies as part of its public lecture series on contemporary African affairs. For more information, contact Ousman Kobo, PhD at kobo.1@osu.edu.
John Mahama Biography
John Dramani Mahama, is a Ghanaian politician who became vice president of Ghana in 2009 and ascended the presidency after the death of President John Evans Atta Mills in July 2012. He was elected president later that year and served until 2017. Mahama was born into a politically active family. His father, Emmanuel Adama Mahama, served as a member of Parliament as well as a regional commissioner in the government of Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah. John Mahama received a bachelor’s degree in history in 1981 from the University of Ghana, Legon, where he also completed postgraduate studies in communication in 1986. Mahama taught high-school history for a few years before pursuing a postgraduate degree in social psychology from the Institute of Social Sciences in Moscow, which was awarded in 1988.
His early career included an appointment as the Information, Culture, and Research Officer at the embassy of Japan until 1995, and at the office of Plan International, a humanitarian and development organization, as the international relations, sponsorship, communication and grants manager. Mahama is also a former chairperson of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Commission and a first co-chair of the United Nations Advocacy Group on the Sustainable Development Goals. He is currently the chairperson of the Tana Forum, a high-level forum on security in Africa, headquartered in Ethiopia. John Mahama or JM, as he is fondly known by his friends, has written for several newspapers and authored a number of publications, including his first book, a memoir entitled My First Coup D'État and Other True Stories from the Lost Decades of Africa.
biography source: britannica.com, authored by Amy McKenna
