ajoa-yeboah-afari

Ajoa Yeboah-Afari, the oldest of Mr B. Yeboah-Afari’s children, is a former President of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA). She is currently Chairperson of the Editors Forum, Ghana and a columnist of The Mirror.

An award-winning journalist, she was born at Dormaa-Ahenkro and describes herself as a “proud daughter of Brong-Ahafo”.

In 1985, she received two prestigious journalism awards: she was voted joint winner of the ‘African Columnist of the Year’ by listeners of the BBC programme, Network Africa; and the GJA honoured her with the first and only John Kugblenu Prize for Valour – to date nobody else has been given that award.

She is one of only two journalists given “special mention” in the 2004 Report of the National Reconciliation Commission for their “bold stand”, in condemning the 1979 executions in Ghana and the other human rights abuses.

From 1997 to 2002, she worked at the Commonwealth Secretariat, in London, UK, as the Secretariat’s first Public Affairs Officer and Editor of its flagship magazine, Commonwealth Currents. From 2004-2008, she was the Editor of the national daily, The Ghanaian Times.

In 2006, she was the recipient of a State Award, Companion of the Order of the Volta for Journalism and Public Service.

Ms Yeboah-Afari is also a creative writer and published author and this is her fourth book. The others (all out of print) are: The Best of Yaa Yaa, a collection of articles from an earlier Mirror column; The Sounds of Pestles, a collection of short stories; and A Decade of Thoughts of a Native Daughter, Volume 1, a collection of articles from her column.

In 2013, she resumed writing her ‘Thoughts of a Native Daughter’ column in The Mirror after a break of nearly three decades.