Alhaji Dr Mahamudu Bawumia is the Vice President of Ghana and the running mate of the flagbearer of incumbent President Nana Akufo-Addo for the December 2020 elections.
Dr Bawumia’s foray into politics started when he was selected by then flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr Akufo-Addo to be his running mate for the 2008 elections. For the 2008 elections, Dr Bawumia is noted to have increased the NPP votes from the 2004 elections, particularly in three regions in northern Ghana, albeit the NPP lost in that election. However, in the 2016 elections, the NPP won and Dr Bawumia was sworn in as the Vice President of the Republic of Ghana, on 7 January 2017.
Before his political career, Dr Bawumia served as a trained economist and banker. He is currently an Associate of the Chartered Institute of Bankers (U.K) (ACIB) and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Bankers (FCIB), Ghana. He also has several publications to his name including articles in journals and two books on Monetary Policy and Economic Development.
Dr Bawumia’s career as an economist and banker started as a lecturer for Monetary Economics and International Finance at the Emile Woolf College of Accountancy in London, England, between 1988 and 1990. He also worked as an economist at the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund in Washington DC, USA. From 1996 to 2000, Dr. Bawumia served as an Assistant Professor of Economics at Hankamer School of Business, Baylor University in Texas, USA. There, he was awarded the Young Researcher Award in 1998.
He returned to Ghana in 2000 and served as a senior economist at the Bank of Ghana. While at the Bank of Ghana, Dr Bawumia held positions such as the Head of Monetary Policy and Financial Stability, Special Assistant to the Governor, Capital Market Committee Chairman, Monetary Policy Committee Member, and in June 2006, he was appointed Deputy Governor of the Bank by former President J.A. Kufuor where he served till 2009.
Dr Bawumia was also a Consultant for the Economic Commission of Africa from February to March 2009. In October 2009, he was appointed a Fellow of the International Growth Centre (IGC), where he served as an IGC Team Member for Sierra Leone. He then served as an Advisor to the Central Bank of Sierra Leone on the redesigning of the organisational structure of the Bank and its monetary policy framework. In January 2010, Dr Bawumia was appointed a Resident Representative of the African Development Bank for Zimbabwe by the African Development Bank and served in that capacity until he was re-nominated as the Vice Presidential Candidate to Mr Akufo-Addo of the NPP ahead of the 2012 Presidential Election.
Dr Bawumia has also served on some academic boards as a visiting scholar at the University of British Columbia Liu Centre for Global Studies, in Canada and the UBC Fisheries Centre from April to October 2009; a Senior Associate Member of St. Anthony’s College at the University of Oxford; and a visiting professor of economic governance at Ghana’s Central University, between 2013 and 2015.
Dr Bawumia had his primary education at Sakasaka Primary School in Tamale and his secondary education at Tamale Secondary School. In secondary school, he was President of the Ghana United Nations Students’ Association (GUNSA) in 1981 and graduated the following year in 1982.
He later had his tertiary education in the United Kingdom where he studied banking and obtained the Chartered Institute of Bankers Diploma (ACIB) at the Emile Woolf College of Accountancy, London in 1984. He also studied Economics at Buckingham University in 1987 where he obtained a First Class Honours Degree. He further obtained a master’s degree in Economics at Lincoln College, Oxford, and a PhD in Economics at the Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada in 1995. Dr Bawumia specialises in the fields of Macroeconomics, International Economics, Development Economics and Monetary Policy.
Dr Bawumia was born in Tamale, on October 7, 1963, to the late former Chairman of the Council of State, and Mamprugu Royal and Paramount Chief, Mumuni Bawumia, and to Mariama Bawumia. He is the twelfth of 18 children of his father, and the second of five children of his mother.
Dr Bawumia is married to Samira Ramadan Bawumia, whose father was the former People’s National Convention (PNC) National Chairman, Ahmed Ramadan. They have four children together.