Kwesi Botchwey, who served as a finance minister first during the military era of the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) from 1982 to 1991 and then in the constitutional period of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) from 1992 to 1995, is dead.
Dr Botchwey is said to have died today 19 November 2022, at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital where he has been the last few days seeking medical care.
Born on 3 September 1944, Dr Botchwey was 78 at the time of his death.
He will go down in Ghana’s history books as the country’s longest-serving finance minister. He served in office alongside Ghana’s longest-serving head of state, the late former president Jerry John Rawlings.
The economist received his secondary education at the Presbyterian Boys’ Secondary School in Legon, Accra. Dr Botchwey held an LLB from the University of Ghana, an LLM from Yale Law School and a doctorate from the University of Michigan Law School.
He taught at the University of Zambia, the University of Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) and the University of Ghana. Among other notable previous assignments, he was an advisor to the World Bank on the 1997 World Development Report.
He served as a member and chairman of the IMF‘s Group of Independent Experts, which conducted the first ever external evaluation of the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility, and as an advisor to the United Nations Development Programme’s Special Initiative on Africa. He was also as an advisor to the European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM).
