President John Mahama has appointed Emelia Affi Agbenyo as a Deputy Chairperson of the Electoral Commission, alongside Joseph Asamoah.
The pair will replace Dr Eric Bossman Asare and Samuel Tettey.
Agbenyo, born on October 7, 1983, in Ashaiman in Ghana’s Greater Accra Region, is Ghanaian and speaks English, Ewe and Twi.
She is a development professional with experience in strategic leadership, corporate governance, public-sector management and international development administration.
Since February 2025, she has served as Deputy Director General for Operations at the Ghana TVET Service, supporting the Director General in overseeing 261 institutions and about 11,000 employees nationwide.
The service provides skills development to more than 70,000 young people in the formal sector, as well as many more people working in Ghana’s informal economy.
In her current role, Agbenyo leads the implementation of national technical and vocational education and training policies and programmes, coordinates partnerships and resource mobilisation, and oversees monitoring and evaluation across the country.
She has also supported a nationwide gender analysis, helped integrate gender-transformation strategies into projects and guided project coordinators in adapting Germany’s Feminist Foreign Policy to Ghana’s context.
Her work has included evaluating programmes aimed at skills development for vulnerable groups, auditing staff and systems for gender competence and compliance, and applying the findings of gender analyses to improve inclusion across operations.
Agbenyo has led national and donor-funded programmes focused on inclusive policy implementation, skills and enterprise development, and gender transformation. Her experience includes policy design, organisational development, resource mobilisation and managing complex partnerships with bodies including UNDP, USAID, KOICA, GIZ Ghana and the former Council for Technical and Vocational Education and Training.
She co-authored a disability and gender inclusion manual for Ghana’s COTVET, developed stakeholder-engagement strategies and trained more than 100 policymakers, TVET managers and instructors in inclusive TVET practices.
She also designed female-focused skills projects that created employment opportunities for young women in electronics, solar and the motorcycle value chain. Other initiatives associated with her work include Women in Box Farming and Youth in Organic Horticulture Production (YouHoP).
Agbenyo has managed cross-functional teams of more than eight people, monitored operational and financial performance, worked with organisations including Samsung, KOICA and Japan Motors, and prepared terms of reference for curriculum development, training tools, procurement and consultant recruitment.
Previous roles and public service
Between October 2015 and December 2018, she was National Gender Focal Person at GIZ Ghana, where she established gender targets and compliance frameworks for national programmes and delivered staff training on gender and inclusion policies.
As an Inclusive Education Consultant for the Korean International Cooperation Agency in February 2015, she contributed to UNICEF Ghana’s Better Life for Girls programme, produced a policy brief on government policies for girl-child education and edited project documents to reflect local and regional educational needs.
From February 2011 to February 2015, she worked as a Technical Assistant at COTVET. Her responsibilities included facilitating the COTVET-GIZ/GSDI partnership, managing informal-sector TVET providers, developing databases, supporting capacity building and helping implement Competence-Based Training through the GSDI project.
She also designed public-relations activities, including multimedia stories about women in TVET.
Earlier, as a Programme Assistant with the UNDP/GEF Small Grant Programme from June 2008 to January 2011, Agbenyo supported community engagement and gender mainstreaming, carried out field monitoring and evaluation, prepared project reports and facilitated workshops on sustainable environmental practices and alternative livelihoods.
She has served as a Commissioner of the National Development Planning Commission since May 2025 and joined the board of NaSIA in August 2025. She has been a board member of the Africa Trade Chamber since October 2023 and of Education and Aspiration since November 2021.
Agbenyo holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Linguistics from the University of Ghana, Legon, and a Master of Arts (Hons) in Education Management and Leadership from the same university. She is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in International Relations at GIMPA, a course listed as running from August 2026.
She completed the West African Certificate Examination at Chemu Secondary School, Tema, undertook Diversity, Equity and Inclusive Policy Training with GIZ Ghana in 2016, and has been a member of the Institute for Public Relations, Ghana, since 2022.
