Mahama picks ‘Ex-MoE’ Jane Naana as 2024 election running mate

Ghanaian academic and politician who served as Minister for Education from February 2013 to January 2017, Professor Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang has been announced as the running mate for John Mahama in the 2024 election.

Prof. Opoku-Agyemang, who partnered with former President John Dramani Mahama in the 2020 election was picked over others including Julius Debrah, Dr Nii Moi Thompson, Member of Parliament for Asunafo and Eric Opoku.

Profile of Jane Naana

She is a full professor of literature. She served as the first female Vice-Chancellor of a state university in Ghana when she took over as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast. She currently serves as the Chancellor of the Women’s University in Africa.

Opoku-Agyemang taught and worked at the University of Cape Coast in 1986. She has held various academic positions including Head of the Department of English, Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Warden of Adehye Hall, Valco Trust Fund Post-Graduate Hostel, and the Founding Dean of the School of Graduate Studies and Research.

Since 1997, she has held the position of Academic Director of the School for International Training in the History and Cultures of the African Diaspora. From 2008 to 2012 she was the university’s Vice Chancellor. She assumed duty on 1 October 2008, succeeding Emmanuel Addow-Obeng.

In March 2007, she was one of five scholars selected to deliver presentations during the 200th Anniversary of the Abolition of Slavery at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City.

She has served on many local and international boards and committees such as the Centre for Democratic Governance, (CDD-Ghana), the editorial board of the Harriet Tubman Series on the African Diaspora (Africa World Press Inc. USA), the Africa Initiative in Canada, and the College of Physicians and Surgeons as an Eminent Citizen.

Opoku-Agyemang is an author. Her focus areas include Literature with a focus on Women from Ghana, Oral literature in Ghana and Africa, and Communication Skills and Issues in the African Diaspora.

She has written and published in scholarly journals and presented articles at various conferences including the 200th Anniversary of the Abolition of Slavery at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City and the Inaugural Lecture to the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In 2015, as the Minister in Charge of Education, Professor Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang published and launched a five-volume collection of published folktales titled ‘Who Told the Most Incredible Story?”