Sarah Adwoa Safo (Left) and Patricia Appiagyei
Ashanti’s are among the people known for daring and achieving great feats, sometimes even historic ones.
They also produce some of the best leaders, some of whom have been exemplified recently by the achievements of two remarkable women making significant impacts in Ghanaian politics.
Patricia Appiagyei, the Member of Parliament (MP) for the Asokwa Constituency, has been recognized as a trailblazer after becoming Ghana’s first female Metropolitan Chief Executive (City Mayor) of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly.
She has served as MP since the seventh Parliament of the Fourth Republic of Ghana, on the ticket of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in Ghana.
She currently serves as the Deputy Minority Leader in Parliament, but only after she was Deputy Majority Leader in the 8th Parliament.
Similarly, and before Appiagyei, Sarah Adwoa Safo, the former MP for the Dome-Kwabenya Constituency, also made a lasting impression on politics in Ghana.
She was the first female Deputy Majority Leader in the country’s history and also served as the first female Minister of State in charge of Government Procurement.
The accomplishments of these two women have garnered widespread praise for them, with many considering them role models for future generations of women in leadership.
Their names were also highlighted in a post on Facebook by the Asante Nation, which celebrates and produces content on people from the Ashanti Region.
But in the long run, it is the New Patriotic Party (NPP) that is the biggest winner, of the sort, in all of these. This is because they are the only political party that has had women in leadership in Parliament, even if it has only been at the level of deputy leadership.
Below are brief profiles on the two women; Sarah Adwoa Safo, and Patricia Appiagyei:
Sarah Adwoa Safo was home-schooled and completed her GCE A’ Level examinations in 1998.
At just 17 years old, she enrolled in the Faculty of Law at the University of Ghana, where she earned her Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) degree in 2002.
She then pursued further studies at the Ghana School of Law and was called to the Bar in October 2004 at the age of 22.
Safo holds a Master of Laws (LL.M.) from George Washington University and graduated with a Postgraduate Diploma in Public Procurement Law and Policy from the University of Nottingham in September 2022.
After a brief stint with the Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C., she returned to Ghana.
In 2005, she joined the law firm Kulendi @ Law and later worked with Zoe, Akyea & Co. as a private legal practitioner.
Concurrently, she served as a Mediator on the Mediation Committee of the Legal Aid Board of Ghana.
For two years, Safo was the first legal officer at the Public Procurement Authority (PPA), where she played a key role in developing proposals that resulted in the establishment of the Appeals and Complaint Panel of the PPA, as well as the rebranding of the Public Procurement Board to become the Public Procurement Authority.
Safo was first elected as the Member of Parliament for Dome-Kwabenya in 2012 and was re-elected in the 2016 and 2020 elections.
She served as the Deputy Majority Leader in the 7th Parliament and was the only female MP to hold the number two position on the Majority front.
In 2017, she was appointed Minister of State in charge of Government Procurement, a role she held until 2021, under Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the 5th president of the 4th Republic of Ghana.
Patricia Appiagyei:
Patricia Appiagyei was the first female Mayor of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly.
She completed her secondary education at St Louis Senior High School in Kumasi and then attended Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, where she studied economics.
From 2001 to 2005, she was appointed as the Deputy Ashanti Regional Minister.
Following that, from 2005 to 2009, she served as the Municipal Chief Executive for Kumasi.
Currently, Patricia Appiagyei is the Member of Parliament for Asokwa and the Deputy Minority Leader.
In 2017, she was appointed by former President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and approved by Parliament to serve as the Deputy Minister of Environment, Science, Technology, and Innovation.
NAD/AE
You can also watch a compilation of the latest Twi news on GhanaWeb TV below:
