Elsie Addo Awadzi is a multi-disciplinary professional and high-impact leader with 30 years of professional experience working in various capacities in Ghana and internationally. Her experience spans economic governance, international financial institutions, international development, investment and financial transactions advisory including for private equity and venture capital funds, and financial inclusion.
Ms. Awadzi was for seven years, until 28th February 2025, Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana following her appointment in February 2018 — making her the second woman so far to occupy that office in the Bank’s 68-year history and the first woman on the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee since its establishment in 2002. During her term as Deputy Governor, she led major reforms that helped to strengthen the banking system.
Before her appointment as Deputy Governor, she worked with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington D.C. for six years. As Senior Counsel, Ms. Awadzi advised several IMF member countries on the design and implementation of effective frameworks for the regulation and supervision of banks, financial crisis management, fiscal responsibility, sovereign wealth funds governance, public debt management, and public financial management. Before joining the IMF in 2012, she held various portfolios including serving as a Commissioner of Ghana’s Securities & Exchange Commission for six years where she played a key role in designing policies, rules, surveillance and enforcement mechanisms for Ghana’s then nascent capital market. She also consulted extensively for local and foreign businesses, private equity/venture capital funds, public sector clients, and development partners on major transactions — and on interventions to strengthen the business regulatory environment and the financial system in several countries.
Ms. Awadzi is a recognized international speaker on high-level panels on economic and financial sector policy issues as well as on leadership development. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Toronto Centre (an institution established by the World Bank over two decades ago to provide capacity building for financial regulators in the developing world) and a member of its Banking Advisory Board. She is also a member of Graça Machel Trust’s Expert Leaders Group on Women’s Financial Inclusion in Africa’s Digital Economy.
She holds post-graduate academic qualifications in law (international Economic Law) and finance from the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington D.C. (LL.M), the University of Ghana Business School (M.B.A. Finance), the Ghana School of Law (Qualifying Certificate in Law), and the University of Ghana Law Faculty (LL.B). She holds Executive Certificates in Women and Power” from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and in Executive Public Leadership from the Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government.
She is the recipient of Ghana’s “State Honour of Grand Medal” in recognition of her service.