Prof. Kwame Karikari

Kwame Karikari retired as Associate Professor and director of the School of Communication Studies at the University of Ghana, Legon. He graduated from the City University of New York and the Columbia University School of Journalism in New York in the mid-1970s. He worked as a newspaper journalist before entering academia. Since the 1980s, he has served in a number of capacities in the management of media institutions. He served as Director General of the state/public Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, and later as a member and then chairman of the board of directors of the state/public Graphic Communications Group Ltd., publishers of the national Daily Graphic and allied weeklies in Ghana. In the 1990s, he served as a member of the independent constitutional press freedom oversight body, the National Media Commission of Ghana. Since the late 1980s, he has been actively engaged in human rights advocacy, focusing on press freedom and freedom of expression. As such, in the mid-1990s, he founded and served as Executive Director of the press freedom advocacy organization, the Media Foundation for West Africa, based in Accra. In 2012, Prof. Karikari served as a member of the Press Freedom Commission in South Africa, set up by the print media industry in South Africa. He has also served as a consultant for international organizations, including UNESCO, WHO, ECOWAS and the AU for which he assisted in drafting a communication strategy document. Over the years, Prof. Karikari has engaged in training of working journalists in several countries around Africa. Currently, he teaches courses on communications policy and regulation and on freedom of expression at a private university in Accra called Wisconsin International University College. This past January, 2026, Prof. Karikari completed a public service assignment as a member of an eight-person Constitution Review Committee, set up by the government of Ghana in January last year, to propose amendments to the country's 34 years old constitution.