Celebrating 10 powerful Black women in politics on International Women’s Day

Joyce Bamford-Addo

Bamford-Addo is a Ghanaian barrister, former judge, and former Speaker of the parliament of Ghana. She started her career in the Inns of Court in London and was called to the English Bar in 1961. She returned to Ghana after working for a year in the United Kingdom and was called to the Ghana Bar in 1962. She began working as an Assistant State Attorney in 1963. After several growths in the legal profession, she became the Chief State Attorney in 1973 and the Director of Public Prosecution in 1976. Bamford-Addo became a Justice of the Supreme Court judge in 1991, making her the first female justice of the Supreme Court of Ghana.

She became the second Deputy Speaker of the Ghana Consultative Assembly in 1991. She was elected unopposed in 2008 as the Speaker of the fourth Parliament of Ghana, making her the first female Speaker in Ghana and the second woman to head an arm of government in Ghana after Georgina Theodora Wood (former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Ghana). The election made her the highest-ranked woman in the political history of Ghana and the first female Speaker in the entire West African region.