H.E. Prof. Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang is Vice President of the Republic of Ghana and the first woman to hold the office. She was sworn in on 7 January 2025, having been President John Dramani Mahama’s running mate in the 2020 and 2024 elections. Vice President Opoku-Agyemang has engaged directly with Ghana’s energy sector: on an official working visit to the Ministry of Energy and Green Transition in January 2026, she urged discipline and long-term planning in efforts to stabilise the sector.

A professor of literature, she spent much of her career at the University of Cape Coast, where she was Head of the Department of English, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and founding Dean of the School of Graduate Studies and Research. From 2008 to 2012 she was the University’s Vice-Chancellor, the first woman to hold that position at a public university in Ghana. She studied French and English at the University of Cape Coast and earned an MA and PhD in Literature from York University in Toronto. She is a two-time Fulbright scholar.

Vice President Opoku-Agyemang served as Minister for Education from 2013 to 2017. She was later Chancellor of the Women’s University in Africa in Harare, Zimbabwe, from 2018 to 2024, and has served as President of the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE). Her honours include being made an Officer of the Order of the Volta and several honorary doctorates.

Her recent engagements have focused on African ownership of energy resources and inclusive finance. At the Africa Oil Week Presidential Dinner in Accra in September 2026, she called for stronger local companies and technical institutions and greater participation by African businesses across the energy value chain, and said Ghana is open to serious, long-term investment that is mutually beneficial. She has also championed the government’s planned Women’s Development Bank, which aims to improve access to finance for women in the informal sector.