His Excellency, the President of the Republic of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has appointed Dr Ishmael Ackah as Acting Executive Secretary for the PURC. He was named to succeed Mrs Mami Dufie Ofori, who served the Commission as Executive Secretary for the past five years.
Dr Ackah is a highly experienced, successful, and well-regarded player in the energy sector. He is an Energy Economist with experience that spans public service, private sector, civil society and academia. In this role, he was the Regulatory and Electricity Market Expert at USAID West Africa Energy Program, Deloitte Ghana. Through a collaboration between the Ghana Oil and Gas for Inclusive and the Government of Ghana (GOGIG), he was recruited as a Technical Advisor on Energy and Petroleum Policies to the Minister for Planning. He led the team that developed the energy and petroleum sections of the 2017 and 2021 Coordinated Programme for Economic and Social Development Policies.
Ishmael was the first Coordinator of Local Content at the Ghana Energy Commission where he initiated an industry-wide baseline study before the full implementation of the Local Content Regulations. Related to this role, he served on the technical Committee that reviewed Ghana’s Energy Policy and was a member of the technical sub-committee of the Energy Sector Recovery Program. He worked as the Head of Policy Unit, at the Africa Centre for Energy Policy, where he coordinated research and advocacy on sustainable energy management, regulations and petroleum revenue management.
He has a keen interest in energy research and served as an Adjunct Lecturer at the Institute for Oil and Gas Studies, University of Cape Coast and the Department of Economics, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration. (GIMPA). He has provided research consultancies for the African Development Bank, United Nations University, United Nations Commission for Africa, IHS Markit, GOGIG/OPM, the Natural Resource Governance Institute, the National Accreditation Board, SNV and SEND Ghana among others. He has published more than 40 peer-reviewed papers in high impact journals.
At the 2017 Ghana Energy Awards, Ishmael received the Rising Star Award. He was also chosen for the 2018 Australian Awards Africa in the category of Energy and Mineral Economics. He holds a PhD in Energy Economics from the University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom, as well as an MSc in Energy Economics from the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Professional Studies, Accra. He is conversant with modelling tools such as Oxmetrics and Eviews.