Dr Mahamudu Bawumia is the current Vice President of Ghana, an Economist and an astute Banker.

He was born on October 7, 1963 in Tamale to Alhaji Mumuni Bawumia, former Chairman of the Council of State (1992–2000) and Hajia Mariama Bawumia.

He was born into a large family; the 12th of his father’s 18 children and the second of his mother’s five.

His father was a teacher, lawyer and politician and a Mamprugu Royal and Paramount Chief of Kperiga in the Northern Region.

Dr Bawumia is married to Samira Ramadan Bawumia, the only daughter of Alhaji Ahmed Ramadan, a former National Chairman of the People's National Convention (PNC). They are blessed with three children.

Educational Background

He attended Sakasaka Primary School in Tamale and gained admission to the Tamale Secondary School in 1975. He was President of the Ghana United Nations Students’ Association (GUNSA) in 1981. After his second cycle education, he went to the United Kingdom where he studied Banking and obtained the Chartered Institute of Bankers Diploma (ACIB).

He obtained a First Class Honours Degree in Economics from Buckingham University in 1987. He then obtained a Master’s Degree in Economics at Lincoln College, Oxford, and Ph.D. in Economics at the Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada in 1995. His areas of specialisation include Macroeconomics, International Economics, Development Economics and Monetary Policy.

Work Experience

From 1988 to 1990, Dr Bawumia worked as a lecturer in Monetary Economics and International Finance at the Emile Woolf College of Accountancy in London, England. He also served as an economist at the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund in Washington DC, USA. From 1996 to 2000, he served as an Assistant Professor of Economics at Hankamer School of Business, Baylor University, Texas, USA, where he also received the Young Researcher Award in 1998. He returned to Ghana in 2000 to work as an economist at the Bank of Ghana. He rose from Senior Economist to Head of Department, and subsequently as Special Assistant to the Governor of the Bank. In June 2006, President J.A. Kufuor appointed him as a Deputy Governor of the Bank.

Career 2008-2011

Dr Bawumia served as a Consultant to the Economic Commission of Africa from February to March 2009.  From April to October 2009, he was a Visiting Scholar at the University of British Columbia Liu Centre for Global Studies and UBC Fisheries Centre.

In October 2009, he was appointed as a Fellow of the International Growth Centre (IGC), a research institute based jointly at the London School of Economics and Political Science and Oxford University that provides advice on economic growth to governments of developing countries, specifically serving as an IGC Team Member for Sierra Leone.

He also 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, the African Development Bank appointed Dr Bawumia as its representative for Zimbabwe, a position he held until reappointed as the Vice-Presidential Candidate to Nana Akufo-Addo on the ticket of the New Patriotic Party for the 2012 Presidential Election.

2012 Elections

Dr Bawumia was selected by Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo as his running mate in the 2008 elections.
He was re-nominated in March 2012 as the Vice-Presidential Candidate to partner Nana Akufo-Addo for the 2012 elections. The Party won 10 seats in the Northern Region including Yendi, Walewale, Yagaba – Kubore, Bunkpurugu, Bimbilla, Chereponi, Kpandai, Tatale–Sanguli, Tolon and Zabzugu. It also won the Nabdam and Talensi constituencies in the Upper East Region although the presidential candidate, Nana Akufo-Addo lost the Presidential Elections to the incumbent John Dramani Mahama.

However, in the 2016 elections, the NPP emerged victorious with Dr Bawumia as the running mate and took five parliamentary seats in the Upper West Region for the first time with a significant increase in its presidential votes in the Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions.

Election 2020

Dr Bawumia has been nominated for the fourth time as the running mate of the NPP Flag bearer, President Nana Akufo-Addo for the 2020 Election.

Impact as Vice President

Dr Bawumia heads Government's Economic Management Team, which oversees the macro-economic management of the country.

He has, so far, stabilised the dwindling fortunes of the cedi against the major trading currencies, reduced the inflation rate from 15.4 per cent in 2016 to a single digit before the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The country's annual growth rate of 3.6 per cent improved to an average of seven per cent while the average 1.6 per cent of annual GDP per capita growth increased to 4.7 per cent under his leadership.

Also, the country's 1.1 per cent average annual growth rate of exports increased to 14.9 per cent.

The annual manufacturing value-added growth rates of 2.1 per cent increased to an average of 6.7 per cent thereby creating fiscal space to implement various social interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr Bawumia championed the Government's digitisation agenda leading to the digitisation of the various public institutions, spearheaded the rolling-out of the National Property and Digital Addressing System with over four million houses tagged with their property addresses.

Mobile Money Interoperability

Dr Bawumia was instrumental in implementing the Triangular Mobile Money Interoperability Payment System at a reduced cost of 4.5 million dollars, instead of 1.2 billion dollars the previous government announced as the cost for implementation.

Ghanaians can now transfer money from their bank accounts to the mobile money wallets seamlessly and vice versa and also transfer across all mobile money operators without any difficulty.
This is to ensure a cashlite society and financial inclusion.

Dr Bawumia is also supporting plans to digitise the land administration system to curb multiple sale of land and its associated protracted litigations.

Involvement in Sinohydro Deal in China

Vice President Bawumia led a delegation in 2017 to China to negotiate for a two-billion dollar Bauxite-Barter Arrangement under the Sinohydro Master Project Support for the country's infrastructural development.

Securing Scholarships for Zongo students

Vice President Bawumia, being a devoted Muslim and concerned with the welfare of Zongo Communities took special interest in securing scholarships for 40 Zongo students comprising 20 females and 20 males to study medicine in Cuba.

Patron of Lepers Aid

Vice President Bawumia, over the past three and half years, had been an advocate for cured lepers and supported their welfare through donations of assorted food items to inmates of the Weija Leprosarium.

He, for instance, funded the construction of a two- bedroom house for an 82-year old cured leper, Madam Daari Pogo, who was abandoned by her family and sheltering in a dilapidated mud house in Motori in the Wa West District of the Upper West Region.

This humanitarian gesture exhibited by the Vice President was hailed by many Ghanaians.

Dr Bawumia also joins Reverend Father Andrew Campbell of the Christ the King Parish of the Catholic Church every year to celebrate the 'Soup Kitchen,' which was a platform to interact with street children and source funding for their upkeep and acquisition of vocational skills.