Ghana’s Bradley Kwaku Poku-Amankwah Selected As A 2025 Ibrahim Leadership Fellow
Ghana’s Bradley Kwaku Poku-Amankwah has been selected as a 2025 Ibrahim Leadership Fellow.
The seasoned energy professional is among the three outstanding African professionals shortlisted to participate in one-year mentoring programmes at leading multilateral institutions.
This was announced by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation on Wednesday.
Bradley will join the African Development Bank (AfDB) for his 12-month training programme, where he will gain both technical and leadership skills while contributing directly to research and policy design.
A special feature of the programme is the opportunity to benefit from the direct mentorship of the head of the host organisation.
His counterparts from Mauritania and Zimbabwe will respectively join the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the International Trade Centre (ITC).
About The Leadership Fellowship
The Fellowship has been in place since 2012, with 40 Fellows (including this year’s cohort) from across Africa participating in the programme.
Upon completion of their placements, Fellows become members of the Foundation’s Now Generation Network (NGN), a coalition of young and mid-career Africans from all 54 African countries, who are committed to moving the continent’s development agenda forward.
About Bradley Kwaku Poku-Amankwah
Bradley Kwaku Poku-Amankwah is the acting principal coordinator at the Ghana Energy Transition Office; a collaboration between United Nations Sustainable Energy for All and the Government of Ghana based at the Office of the President in Accra.
He previously served as senior technical assistant to Ghana’s Minister for Energy and was secretary to the country’s National Energy Transition Committee. He is also Ghana’s youngest board member of State Enterprise and founder of Play-it-Forward Africa; a social enterprise using sports as a vehicle for impact in the health sector.
He is a graduate of the University of St Andrews, and the London School of Economics, as well as an incoming candidate for the MSc in Energy Systems at the University of Oxford’s School of Engineering Science which he will be reading part-time while continuing to lead Ghana’s Energy Transition Office. He previously served as a Trade Service Advisor at the UK-Ghana Chamber of Commerce, stationed at the British High Commission in Accra.
Bradley was very active in the student entrepreneurship scene, where he founded his innovative waste cooking oil to biofuel concept named ‘Smart Fuel’. This initiative earned him numerous accolades, grants, and awards, including the Shell Live Wire award, the Mustard Seed Prize for Social Impact, the Tony Elumelu prize in Nigeria, and reaching the finals of the Lee Kuan Yew Global Business Plan Competition.
He was also the campus director for Enactus St Andrews and established the university’s first chapter of the United Nations foundation-sponsored student entrepreneurship competition known as the Hult Prize, later leading as its country director for Ghana. During his time at St Andrew’s, he was awarded the best student achiever in the United Kingdom by the GUBA foundation, and voted as the 4th most outstanding student of African or Caribbean origin in Britain by the Powerlist Magazine, now called the Aleto Foundation.
Bradley is a proud son of Asanteman, descended from Otumfuo Agyeman Prempeh I through his paternal lineage, with ancestors settling in Buokrom. On his maternal side, he belongs to the prolific Collingwoode-Williams family of Ghana and Sierra Leone. The late Joseph Collingwoode-Williams, a pioneering hotelier and one-time toastmaster to Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s First President.
Story by Hajara Fuseini
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