Prof Akilagpa Sawyerr
Professor Akilagpa Sawyerr has contributed significantly to the growth of the mining sector during his tenure as founding chairman of Ghana’s Minerals Commission.
The Minerals Commission is responsible for the regulation and management of the utilization of the mineral resources of Ghana and the co-ordination and implementation of policies related to mining (The Minerals Commission Act 1993, Act 450).
It strives to make Ghana the leading destination of mining sector investment in Africa through creating a congenial atmosphere in which all stakeholders work as partners in a safe environment to achieve one common goal; sustainable development through mining.
The Commission’s primary responsibility is to foster the efficient and effective regulation and management of the utilization of Ghana’s Mineral Commission.
In March this year, Prof Akilagpa turned 85-years having served in various capacities in his country Ghana and beyond.
He has held high public office in Ghana, as the Founding Chairman of the Minerals Commission, Member of the Council of State and Chairman of the Volta River Authority, the leading energy generating company in Ghana.
As part of our series on honouring the contributions of Ghanaians in the extractive sector, we bring you a brief on the founding Chairman of the Minerals Commission.
About Prof Akilagpa Sawyerr
Prof. Sawyerr, affectionately called Aki, was born on March 24, 1939, and has enjoyed an illustrious career in academia, political governance and policy development spanning over five decades.
Earning his Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Durham in 1962, his most prominent works included chairing the National Negotiating Committee for the Volta Aluminium Company (VALCO) Agreement in 1982 – 1990 and also his appointment as chairman to oversee the celebration of the centenary of the birth of Ghana’s first president, Dr Kwame Nkrumah.
Prof Akilagpa Sawyerr
Akilagpa Sawyerr grew up in the then Gold Coast during the militant struggles for self-determination. Aki’s father, who died when he was only nine years old, made important contributions to these struggles.
The Honourable Akilagpa Sawyerr, an Accra lawyer, was one of the leading public and political figures of his generation. He was, among many things, a founder member of the National Congress of British West Africa, a member of the colonial Legislative Council and a patron of sports and many public causes.
Aki’s mother Charlotte Amy Sawyerr, nee Mettle, as a single parent was the key figure in Aki’s upbringing, including overseeing school work and making the considerable material sacrifices that enabled Aki to fulfill his dream of studying law. Her incredible longevity, she died aged 103, enabled her to see the fullness of what her parenting and sacrifices had facilitated.
After completing his secondary school education at Achimota School, Aki studied law at universities in United Kingdom and the United States, obtaining his doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley. Aki’s teaching and research was initially mainly in law. Over the years however, as he moved across academic positions in Tanzania, through Ghana to Papua New Guinea, with involvements at other universities around the world, his work increasingly reflected a multidisciplinary approach. This shift was rooted in his evolving theoretical and political perspectives and a growing concern with the challenges of underdevelopment and transformation in Africa.
Aki’s growing disciplinary scope and interests allied with the transcending of the parameters of mainstream jurisprudence informed his involvement in the community of progressive scholars in Africa and beyond. This was exemplified in his active involvement in CODESRIA (Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa) in which he became a leading influence and was elected president of the governing council. Aki’s first academic job was in the Faculty of Law at the then University of East Africa, Dar es Salaam.
This context made an important contribution to his development as a progressive scholar and activist with a consistently anti- imperialist position. Newly-independent Tanzania was in the vanguard of the anti-colonial struggle including serving as the headquarters of the OAU Liberation Committee which oversaw collective African support for the national liberation movements across Africa. The University in Dar es Salaam was at the forefront of the struggle for intellectual freedom in Africa and its progressive anti- imperialist scholarship became known as the Dar es Salaam School.
Aki’s contemporaries in Dar included well known radicals such as Tomas Szentes, Justinian Rweyemamu, Henry Mapolu, John Saul, Lionel Cliffe and Walter Rodney. Specifically, in the Faculty of Law his contemporaries included Sol Picciotto, Yash Ghai, Joe Kanywanyi, Haroub Othman. In this environment he contributed to shaping a generation of progressive lawyers from all parts of the world, including Prof. Issa Shivji and Willy Mutunga, former Chief Justice of Kenya.
Aki was a Professor of Law at the University of New Guinea for almost a decade, an appointment he took up after many years in the Law Faculty of the University of Ghana, Legon.In Legon, just as in Dar es Salaam, Aki was a central figure in an influential circle of progressive law lecturers and their associates in other Faculties who questioned establishment values and mainstream scholarship and encouraged their students to explore beyond their boundaries.
They were an important influence in the development of a progressive Leftist tradition in the Ghanaian student movement of that period. His contemporaries and associates included Jawa Apronti, Kwesi Botchwey, Ebo Hutchful, Ama Ata Aidoo and Atta Britwum.
Aki returned to Legon as Vice Chancellor after his years in Papua New Guinea. This was the beginning of his transition from the classroom into an administrative, research and policy engagement with the challenges of tertiary education in Africa. That shift was completed when on leaving Legon he joined the staff of the Association of African Universities (AAU) and subsequently headed it as Secretary General. Aki’s years of leadership of the University of Ghana, Legon was in the context of the dominance of neoliberal Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) across Africa, for which Ghana was the poster child.
One of the more depressing and destructive features of SAP was the questioning of the value of tertiary education in Africa and therefore the wisdom of allocating public expenditure to it. The defence of tertiary education and its value in Africa’s transformation agenda became and has remained an important element of Aki’s intellectual and activist opposition to neoliberalism. Aki’s leadership of the AAU embodied this agenda and was an important and dynamic period in the life of that organisation.
The advancement of the African transformation agenda has been an important driver of Aki’s many public service roles in Ghana, across Africa and internationally. These public service roles have been in education, development policy, political governance, etc. In Ghana several of these have related to the energy and mineral sectors and the strengthening of citizens’ organisation and expression.
In recent years Aki, through his role on the boards of several advocacy NGOs and as chair of funding institutions, has played an important role in the deepening of Ghana’s democratic culture. Accepting to chair (1982-90) the National Negotiating Committee for the VALCO Agreement was a major political gamble as well as opportunity to lead the reform of an agreement Aki had campaigned against as a major symbol of the overbearing influence of foreign capital in Ghana.
The VALCO renegotiation redressed inequities that the Nkrumah government accepted to access funding for the construction of the Akosombo Dam. The dam was the centerpiece of the Volta River Project, a cornerstone of Nkrumah’s industrialisation and transformation agenda. The subsequent utilization and with it the sharing of the experience from the VALCO renegotiations has been one of Aki’s most important contributions to development policy and practice.
Aki’s growing disciplinary scope and interests allied with the transcending of the parameters of mainstream jurisprudence informed his involvement in the community of progressive scholars in Africa and beyond. This was exemplified in his active involvement in CODESRIA (Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa) in which he became a leading influence and was elected president of the governing council. Aki’s first academic job was in the Faculty of Law at the then University of East Africa, Dar es Salaam.
This context made an important contribution to his development as a progressive scholar and activist with a consistently anti- imperialist position. Newly-independent Tanzania was in the vanguard of the anti-colonial struggle including serving as the headquarters of the OAU Liberation Committee which oversaw collective African support for the national liberation movements across Africa.
The University in Dar es Salaam was at the forefront of the struggle for intellectual freedom in Africa and its progressive anti- imperialist scholarship became known as the Dar es Salaam School.
A similar opportunity to combine political commitment and public service was afforded by Aki’s appointment to chair the national committee appointed by Ghana’s President to plan and oversee the celebration of the centenary of the birth of Kwame Nkrumah. The work of the committee made an important contribution to the rehabilitation of Nkrumah’s contested place in Ghanaian history.
Aki’s leadership of the Nkrumah centenary celebration neatly united his public service and his status as one of the intellectual leaders of the Ghanaian Left and one of Africa’s most respected progressive scholars.
This status is the product of his many years of work in the academy , in public policy analysis, in building independent intellectual institutions and spaces in Africa and the Global South, as a mentor and teacher to young scholars and activists, and as comrade in fighting causes for social justice, the self determination of peoples, the accountability of political power, against the power of Trans National Corporations (TNCs), imperialism and big power bullying.
Over the years Aki has been remarkable for his ability to bridge generational divides and earn the respect of even those who do not share his values and principles.
