Afrobarometer’s Gyimah-Boadi named one of “100 Most Influential Africans”

Afrobarometer co-founder and board chair E Gyimah-Boadi has been named one of New African’s “100 Most Influential Africans of 2021.”

The magazine cites Gyimah-Boadi as an “opinion shaper” for his leadership in building the non-partisan survey research network Afrobarometer into the go-to source for reliable data on African experiences and evaluations of democracy, governance, and quality of life.

Since 1999, the Ghana-based network has completed eight survey rounds in up to 39 countries and trained a generation of African researchers.

Round 9 surveys (2021/2022) are currently underway. Describing Gyimah-Boadi as one of the continent’s “pre-eminent scholars of democracy and governance,” New African says his “most lasting contribution will be his work to empower coming generations of African researchers and policymakers to make decisions based on data, not hunches, and to give African citizens a voice in public discourse.”

Gyimah-Boadi, who retired as Afrobarometer’s executive director and became board chair in early 2021, is also co-founder and former executive director of the Ghana Center for Democratic Development, an independent democracy and good governance think tank based in Accra.

A former professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Ghana, he has held faculty positions at universities in the United States, including the American University School of International Service, and fellowships at the Center for Democracy, Rule of Law and Development (Stanford University); the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; and the International Forum for Democratic Studies/National Endowment for Democracy/US Institute of Peace.

Gyimah-Boadi is also a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences (U.S.) and the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Democracy and the Advisory Council of the Ibrahim Index of African Governance, among others. For his contributions to research and policy advocacy on democracy, accountable governance, and human rights in Africa, he has won a myriad of awards, including the Distinguished Africanist of the Year of the African Studies Association (2018); the Martin Luther King, Jr. Award for Peace and Social Justice (2017); and the Republic of Ghana’s highest national award, Order of Volta (2008).

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