Amishadai Larson Adu
(born 1914), Assistant District Commissioner, KumasiSitter in 1 portrait
by Unknown photographer
vintage print, 12 December 1946
NPG x134711
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Tommy Gee
26 January 2016, 08:22
A.L.Adu was the first Permanent Secretary to Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, became first Deputy Secretary Secretary General to the Commonwealth Secretary General. He was one of the early Africans to take over from British Colonial Administrators and was in great demand for helping with the winds of change. Thus he served on the governing body of the Institute of Development Studies set up by Barbara Castle at Sussex University in 1965.
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Robert B. Todd
20 April 2018, 11:26
Amishadai Larson Adu, b. 22 October 1914 in Antum, in the Eastern Region of the then Gold Coast. He held a degree in Natural Sciences from Cambridge, taught at his old school, Achimota College, joined the Gold Coast Administrative Service in 1942 (four years before the photograph), then moved to central government. He was secretary to the Coussey Committee which led to a ministerial government headed by Nkrumah. He guided Africanization in the civil service (on which he wrote a book), and after independence (1957) served as Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of External Affairs (1957-9) before becoming Secretary to the Cabinet. He left Ghana in 1962 for a position in East Africa after being moved to the newly established National Council for Higher Education, where one of his tasks was to draw up a blueprint for the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute. After his position with the Commonwealth Secretariat (1966-70), he returned to Ghana.