Board of Directors /

E. Gyimah-Boadi / IFIT Board President

Professor Gyimah-Boadi is President of IFIT’s Board of Directors. He is co-founder and Board chair of Afrobarometer: an independent pan-African research network that provides data on African citizens’ values, evaluations, and experiences and that has become the global reference for high-quality data and analysis on African democracy, governance, economy, and society. He is also co-founder and former executive director of the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), which has long played an instrumental role in Ghana’s democratisation process.

Professor Gyimah-Boadi has received a myriad of international awards, including the 2017 Martin Luther King, Jr. Award for Peace and Social Justice and the African Studies Association’s 2018 Distinguished Africanist Award in recognition of a lifetime of distinguished contributions to the field. He was named as one of the “100 Most Influential Africans of 2021″ by New African Magazine.

A former professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Ghana, Legon, Professor Gyimah-Boadi is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Democracy and has served on the advisory boards of many initiatives, including the Ibrahim Index of African Governance. He has held faculty positions at various 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.).

Professor Gyimah-Boadi received his doctorate from the University of California (Davis) and undergraduate degree from the University of Ghana, Legon. He has published more than a dozen books and monographs, several influential peer-reviewed journal articles, and more than 30 book chapters. Some of his best-known works include his co-authored book 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). He is a member of the U.S. Academy of Sciences and Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences.   

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