Kwadwo Afari-Gyan

He retired from his position of Chairman of the Electoral Commission in June 2015.

He was awarded the Order of the Star of Ghana, the highest national award by President John Mahama, on 1 July 2015.

He has also worked in a large number of other African countries, and has written several books. He was the "star witness" for the Electoral Commission of Ghana in an electoral petition filed by the New Patriotic Party after the 2012 general election.

The 2004 general elections were disputed in court by the opposition National Democratic Congress. But the case was lost on technicalities. Again, the 2012 presidential election between President John Dramani Mahama and Nana Akufo-Addo ended up in an 8-month election petition trial at the Supreme Court. The opposition leader lost the case in a 5:4 split decision, which held that the President was validly elected. But, the trial, which was live on television, exposed some fundamental weaknesses in Ghana's electoral process, triggering calls and moves towards comprehensive electoral reforms before the 2016 general elections. The ruling has been heavily criticised by jurists.

In 1998, he became the Executive Secretary of the Association of African Election Authorities. He was also member of a committee of experts to advice Nigeria on elections.

In 1992, he was appointed deputy chairman of the Interim National Electoral Commission by the Provisional National Defence Council, which was ruling as a military junta, with the hope of returning the country to civilian rule. His job was to ensure that the November 1992 presidential election and the December 1992 parliamentary elections were free and fair. Jerry John Rawlings, the chairman of the PNDC, who was also Head of State, stood and won the elections.

With the coming into force of the Fourth Republican Constitution, a new Electoral Commission was set up and Afari-Gyan became its first substantive chairman. He has successfully supervised all the elections held under this constitution so far. He has successfully chaired the conduct of presidential and parliamentary elections in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2008. In the last of these a number of unofficial institutions attempted to declare the results of these elections, with Afari-Gyan stating that these results could not be trusted.

Kwadwo Afari-Gyan CSG (born 18 June 1945) is a Ghanaian academic, political scientist and election administrator. He was Chairman of the Electoral Commission of Ghana from 1993 to 2015.

Afari-Gyan was born on 18 June 1945 at Anyimon in the Brong Ahafo Region of Ghana. He attended Achimota School and Adisadel College for his A Level and also graduated from the University of Ghana in 1967 with a BA degree in Philosophy. He went on to attain a MA degree in African politics in 1969 from the same university. He also studied in the United States where he was awarded a Ph. D. in political science from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1974.