Mrs. Elsie Addo Awadzi was appointed 2nd Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana by H.E. the President of the Republic of Ghana in February 2018, with responsibilities that span the Bank of Ghana’s financial regulatory and supervisory functions, among others. She is also a member of the Bank of Ghana’s Board of Directors. Additionally, she serves as a member of the Bank of Ghana’s statutory Monetary Policy Committee, and is a member of the Financial Stability Council established by H.E. the President of the Republic of Ghana. She is the second woman to be appointed Deputy Governor, in the Bank of Ghana’s 62-year history.
Before her appointment as Deputy Governor, she was Senior Counsel of the Financial and Fiscal Law Unit of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s Legal Department, based in Washington, D.C. In that role, she travelled widely, working with IMF member countries in all regions of the world to assess the stability of their financial systems, strengthen financial regulatory and supervisory frameworks, and manage financial crises. She also assisted several IMF member countries to strengthen their legal and institutional frameworks to ensure more robust public financial management, public debt management, and fiscal responsibility in the context of IMF surveillance, lending, and technical assistance. During her 6-year tenure with the IMF, she served as course director and trainer at several IMF regional technical training programmes for senior officials of central banks, supervisory agencies, and Finance Ministries in Asia, Europe, and sub-Saharan Africa.
Prior to joining the IMF in 2012, Ms. Addo Awadzi was a two-term Commissioner of Ghana’s Securities & Exchange Commission and in that role, was part of formulating policies and rules to regulate the capital market. She also worked on several key financial sector legal reforms in Ghana and other countries in Africa, and worked briefly as a senior treasury dealer in Barclays Bank Ghana Limited. She was called to the Ghana Bar in April 1996 and thereafter worked in private law practice with major law firms in Ghana, and went on to found a boutique corporate finance and investment law firm which she managed for 10 years before it was acquired.
She holds an LL.M (in International Business and Economic Law) from the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C, and a post-graduate Qualifying Certificate in Law from the Ghana School of Law. She also holds an M.B.A. (in Finance) and an LL.B. from the University of Ghana. She has several international publications to her credit on financial regulation and crisis management, debt management, corporate governance, among others. She is passionate about strengthening governance and institutions to support equitable and inclusive socio-economic development.
Mrs. Elsie Addo Awadzi is the Keynote Speaker of our 2020 #MSMEDay Virtual Conference..
