Isaac Osei

As Chief Executive Officer of Ghana Cocoa Board (Cocobod) in 2006, Mr Osei led the Board to make investments in yield-enhancing schemes, cocoa disease and pests control as well as trade logistics infrastructure which saw Cocobod attaining an astounding production target of one million tonnes of cocoa within three years, a record unmatched at the time. He served as vice-chair of the executive committee of the International Cocoa Organization and was a member of the Consultative Board on the World Cocoa Economy.

Osei was appointed Ambassador to the United Kingdom and Ireland (2001- 2006). Whiles in London, he was elected to the position of chairperson at the Board of Governors of the Commonwealth Secretariat, UK.

He served as Chairman of Cocoa Marketing Company (UK) Ltd and was a member of the Board of Aluworks Ghana Ltd, Cocoa Processing Company Ltd and WAMCO. He served as the managing director of Intravenous Infusions Limited, prior to his appointment as High commissioner of Ghana to the United Kingdom and Ambassador to Ireland by John.A. Kufuor. He served in that capacity from 2001 to 2006. He stood as a Member of Parliament on the New Patriotic Party ticket for the Subin Constituency in 2008 and won. During the 2008 Ghanaian general elections he obtained 45,058 votes out of the 61,195 valid votes cast which sums up to 73.6%. In 2010 he stood as a presidential candidate for the 2010 New Patriotic Party presidential primary election. He came third after Alan John Kyeremanten, while the President of Ghana Nana Akufo-Addo was elected as flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party. He was appointed CEO of Tema Oil Refinery in 2017 until his resignation in 2019. He has been credited with embarking on a needed shut down maintenance to improve the performance and reliability of the refinery after it had missed three cycles of scheduled shut down maintenance prior to his appointment.

Isaac Osei was born on March 29, 1951, at Ashanti Newtown in the Ashanti Region, Kumasi. He attended the State Primary School in Kumasi from 1957 to 1960 and thereafter attended Achimota Primary School from 1960 to 1963. He entered Achimota School in 1963. After completing Achimota School in 1970, he studied at the University of Ghana, Legon where he graduated with B.Sc. (Hons) Degree in Economics in 1973. He further studied Mathematics and Statistics at the Economics Institute at the University of Colorado in Boulder, USA. Osei, in addition, holds a master's degree in Development Economics, from Williams College in Massachusetts, USA from 1976 to 1977.