Sam Jonah

Sir Sam Jonah is most probably Ghana's foremost business leader and most celebrated company executive.

He received his secondary education in Ghana at Adisadel College, and proceeded thence to Great Britain where he acquired university degrees in mining and management related disciplines from the Camborne School of Mines in Cornwall and the respected technical institution, Imperial College, part of the University of London.

He rose through the managerial ranks of Ghana's largest, and most strategic, mining corporation, Ashanti Goldfields, to become its Chief Executive at the remarkable age of 36. Once at the helm of the mining and industrial conglomerate, he began a systematic process of transforming it into, in the view of some industry watchers, Africa's most dynamic company. Notably he secured a listing on the New York Stock Exchange, making the company the first predominantly African-owned firm to attain that distinction.

After engineering a long series of successful transitions which saw the company develop relationships with a number of world-class companies, such as Lonmin PLC, he oversaw what may become his greatest achievement: the widely praised merger between Goldfields and AngloGold of South Africa, to create the world's second-largest gold mining company.

His handling of a hedge fund crisis in 1999 is a blemish on a very distinguished business service record.

In 2005, he was knighted by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II for services to the business world, and to humanity.

He is active on the board of the company he helped form, AngloGold Ashanti, as well as on the boards of several Ghanaian and international firms such as First Atlantic Merchant Bank and Defiance Mining. A noted philanthropist, he holds the chancellorship of the University of Cape Coast, one of Ghana's three prestigious public universities.