Institute For Policy And Biographical Research (IPBR)

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The Institute for Policy and Biographical Research was founded in 2018 as an affiliate think tank within the Central University in Ghana. On the University’s Council decision, it is to serve as an intermediary between academic research and opinions of leading individuals and institutions, their public memoirs and how they had over the years affected public policy or intellectual inquiry. In the concept paper of establishment, the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Bill Buenar Puplampu’s concern was that, the “major gap in this area is the absence of deep historical analysis of the lives, times and contributions of known, not-so-known, unknown, notable and not- so- notable persons to the development of our nation and region.”

With biographical research and data preservation we look at:

1. Presidential, parliamentary/legislative leadership,
2. Economic governance, 
3. Science and scientists,
4. Academics and public intellectuals,
5. Business and economic leaders.
6. Inter-faith leadership

This is of the past and present and how they have inspired or otherwise general policy advocacy. It is based on research and review of critical thinking that leads to peoples’ well-being.

In the subsidiary policy implication of such critical thinking, we focus on two main strands:

The role of governance structures, challenges and prospects of soft commodities in economic growth:

1. Cocoa
2. Coffee
3. Rice
4. Cashew
5. Shea crop

Secondly, the role of China or the China-Africa Multilateral Cooperation. The objectives are:

1. China’s role in Sub-Saharan Africa’s economic development policy formulation.
2. How does the cooperation shape commodity policy in Ghana?
3. Tracking or mapping of grants, loans and technical advice.

Motto

Thoughts and memoirs that define nationhood.

Mission

1. To serve as a leading institute for the collection and preservation of individual and institutional biographical works from 1957 and the publication of some of such works.
2. As fulcrum of history and memoirs in policy formation including commodities structures and growth. 

Secretariat

Director

Jumah ADUSEI is also Associate Professor and Acting Dean of the School of Graduate Studies. Before joining CU, he was Economics Advisor with the UNDP from 2009 to 2011. Prior to that, he was Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Vienna from 2001 to 2009. 

Adusei has been Senior Economist at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna 1998 to 2006, Visiting Economist with the Economics Analysis Division at the Oesterreichische Nationalbank, Vienna 2000 to 2001, Economist Statistician with the Money and Banking Statistics Division at the European Central Bank, Frankfurt 2001 to 2002.

He has worked as Research Fellow at the Federal Institute of Agricultural Economics, Vienna 1994 to 1996 as well as Senior Research Fellow at the Martin Luther University Institute for Agricultural Development in Central and Eastern Europe, Halle/Saale, Germany 1996 to 1998.

Adusei has consulted for UNIDO and UNIPSIL. His research interests are in commodity markets, international finance, development economics and applied econometrics.

He holds a Bachelor in Agricultural Economics from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi and a Masters in Agricultural Economics and Doctorate in Agricultural Economics and International Economics from the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna.

Associate Director

Ivor AGYEMAN-DUAH is a development specialist and former special advisor on international development cooperation to the Ghanaian President, John Agyekum Kufuor. Previously Head of Public Affairs at the Ghana Embassy in Washington, DC and Culture and Communication Advisor at the High Commission in London, he was a member of the World Bank Institute that looked at the role of African diaspora in economic growth, a consulting advisor to the African Center for Economic Transformation and the Institute for Fiscal Studies in Accra.

He is a visiting Associate Professor at the University of Johannesburg and author and co-editor of, Pilgrims of the Night: Development Challenges and Opportunities in Africa, Africa – A Miner’s Canary into the Twenty-First Century – Essays on Economic Governance and An Economic History of Ghana- Half a Century of Challenges and Progress.

A Member of the SDGs Philanthropy Platform of the UNDP(Ghana), he has done development work in Rwanda, on commodities in Cote D’Ivoire for Novel Commodities and in fifteen other African countries.

He has served as visiting Research Scholar at the Exeter College of the University of Oxford and the Hutchins Institute at Harvard University. He holds graduate degrees from the London School of Economics, the School of Oriental and African Studies, London and the University of Wales.

Librarian and Archivist

George Clifford YAMSON

Yamson’s career began with a stint as a Junior Library Assistant in 1999 soon after he completed Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination. He subsequently obtained a Diploma in Business Studies from Accra Polytechnic, Diploma in Librarianship and Bachelor of Art degree in Information Studies and Sociology from the University of Ghana, Legon. He holds a Masters degree in Information Studies and a Post Graduate Diploma in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education from University of Ghana, Legon and University of Education, Winneba respectively.

He worked with the Ghana Library Authority and rose through the ranks to become the Assistant Library Officer and an Assistant Head of Catalogue Department. Yamson is also a managing partner at K & G IT Consult and has rendered consultancy services to a number of institutions and Churches across Ghana. Yamson is a researcher; an Assistant Librarian and Head of school of Architecture and Design Library, Central University, Miotso.

He has a number of publications and currently pursuing a Doctor of Philosophy in Information Science from the University of South Africa. Yamson lives in Tema with beautiful and lovely wife Eugenia and their three daughters, Nyameyie, Akyedzepa and Ewura Abena.

Adjunct Secretary

Enoch JACKSON-OKINE a Senior Administrative Assistant at the office of the Vice Chancellor, Central University. He joined Central University in 2009 through the National Service scheme. Through successfully managing both internal and external relationships, he positioned himself as a valuable resource in a variety of situations. 

As a person with strong positive human values who takes-charge and able to develop plans and successfully implement them, Mr. Jackson exhibits high level of integrity and trustworthiness. His enthusiasm to work has made him a preferred resource in many situations. 

Through hard work, dedication and good sense of direction, Enoch has worked in the Faculty of Arts and Social Science, Public Relations Unit, Central Business School and the office of the Pro Vice-Chancellor Academic Affairs of Central University. He has and severs on various committees within the University including; Statutes Review Committee, Strategic Plan Implementation Committee, Office of Institutional Advancement, Standards and Sanctions Regime Committee, Enhancing Efficiency for CU Academic Delivery,  Central Plaza Management Committee etc.

As an enterprising self-motivated administrator having ‘hand-on’ experience, Jackson is mostly in the position to contribute his administrative management, corporate affairs, transferable skills and experience to improve operations; contributing to support services and associated narratives to enhance efficiency and growth.

Programmes

1. Archival and biographical data preservation
2. Conversations with distinguished biographical guests’ series.
3. Quarterly review workshops.
4. Annual stalk-holders’ meetings.

Newsroom/Videos

1. Maiden Stakeholders' Forum held at the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences (Photo Gallery)

Publications

IPBS has Digibooks, an Accra-based publishing company as its associate publishers of its policy papers, journals, anthologies and monographs reflecting its works in biographical research and policy.

1. Policy Briefs
2. Biographical essays and other articles
3. Monographs/Books
4. Newsletter

Contact

Miotso Campus

0303218590

ipbr@central.edu.gh

Subscription for newsletter and programmes

ipbr@newsletter.com

By Their Fruits: Memoirs and National Development.

Ivor Agyeman-Duah

Nations are built by individuals but prosperous and respected ones by those with exceptional ideas that improved on human conditions. They are remembered because their ideas of transformation endured. 

Western political thoughts and cultures that helped with mental –liberation and partly championed by philosophers like John Locke, Adam Smith, Thomas Paine and from religious leaders that included John Wesley in Britain were built upon by later generations because they endured. These ideas defied colour or race as Wesley’s evangelism in Britain and consequences in the world.; ideas of the pilgrims who landed in the new world and contributions of people like Alexander Hamilton from the little island of Nevis in the Caribbean to the stock exchange economy of the US.

The Anglo-Saxon culture of course transcended Europe into empire and later the thinking of economists and philosophers like Karl Marx, V.S. Lenin, John Maynard Keynes would influence many African anti-colonial leaders in the 1940s. Ideals of universal values could be adopted to suit local challenges. The intellectual history of Africa and Ghana can hardly disconnect from these universals and for half a century since independence, these ideas (with huge African contributions) in science, humanities- liberal and neo-liberal, Anglo-American or traditional African, have influenced policy and national development.

How were some of these thoughts formed and under what circumstances? Of what effect did they have and continue to have? How do we get access to these and how are they preserved since they have become part of the living culture in Ghana?

One of the things Kwame Nkrumah did and very well, was preservation of his thoughts through public memoirs. He wrote more than any other African leader of his time. He influenced many anti-colonial movements in the 1960s. There were many others great minds he worked with or who independently lived around his era or before- economists JH Mensah, JH Frimpong Ansah, post-colonial jurists and giants of the Mensah Sarbah, Casey Hayford types through to the times of Kobina Arku Korsah, medical scientists of known disposition of the likes of Charles Odamtten Easmon, and of the quiet in profile neurosurgery specialist, Buenor Puplampu,  Presidents of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, Emmanuel Evans-Anfom, RP Barfour,  and other cultural and literary activists such as Michael Dei- Anang, Ephraim Amu, Oku Ampofo, Alex Kyerematen, J.H. Kwabena Nketia, Efua Sutherland and others. Some left memoirs, scattered thoughts and commentaries all of which give insights into their public service. 

“By their fruit you will recognize them. Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles?” When Jesus asked this question in the book of Matthew, it was predicated on a living inquiry into our times.

Some of the Ghanaian nationalists did not leave much but had their obituaries done and what defined them known. Of course not all public servants- be they politicians, technocrats, scientists, cultural activists like some self-declared heroes, have sufficient fruits in public interest to merit elaborate preservation.

But what is the state of those who are and those we should take interest in their past contributions? The prosperity of the book industry, biographical data preservation and archival materials is invariably dependent on the state of the economy in Ghana. Low government investments in state publishing, little budget support and poor conditions of service are reflected in those institutions tasked with these national services.

The emergence and still developing civil society and think tanks in the frame of public-private partnerships however, open possibilities for rescue whether through greater democratic space of flourishing multimedia outlets, legislative support or international partnerships. 

Through this democratic space for instance, biographical data of the late JH Mensah since August 2018 sheds light on his intransigence against the cabinet decision of Prime Minister K A Busia on devaluation of the cedi. This decision eventually led to the overthrow of Ghana’s Second Republic by the military in 1972 from which the country would suffer brutal military dictatorships thereafter.

Again long before the liberalization of the telecommunication industry in Ghana from the mid- 1990s, one of the world’s leading physicists, Prof. F.A. Alottey had written scholarly and public papers about the importance of such benefits to Ghana’s development at the University of Michigan in the US. Were they known and did these influence the pivotal Accelerated Development Programme (of the country’s Structural Adjustment Programme ) from 1994? Would the country have had to engage expensive consultants for policy formulation if these data preservations had immediately been available to government?

Memoirs, biographical data are not just about the ideas or thoughts of those who have expired and their times. To the extent that some of their propositions were not fulfilled, timeless and unknown, they have become valuable not only as part of national memory bank but fodder into the research and development of public policy.

And research and development whether of a scientific product or social engineering of the mind have always been layers for progressive countries that engage in them.