Dr Maxwell Opoku-Afari is a distinguished economist and policymaker with almost three decades of experience in central banking and international finance and has held senior positions at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Bank of Ghana. He was appointed the First Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana on August 7, 2017, and currently serves in this role.

Prior to his appointment as First Deputy Governor, Dr Opoku-Afari worked in various positions at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for nearly a decade, where he rose to the positions of Deputy Division Chief and Mission Chief. In this role, he led programme negotiations missions and numerous Article IV consultations at the IMF. He was Mission Chief for São Tomé and Príncipe and Mauritius, and also worked on Rwanda, Zambia and Jamaica during his time at the IMF.

In addition, as the Deputy Division Chief in the Regional Studies Division in the African Department of the IMF, he led the production of the Regional Economic Outlook for sub-Saharan Africa, one of the IMF’s flagship publications. He also participated in IMF negotiations in several African and Caribbean countries and was a reviewer of policy documents for many developing nations during his time as a Senior Economist in the Strategy, Policy, and Review (SPR) Department of the IMF.

Dr Opoku-Afari’s work at the IMF focused on monetary policy modernization, macro-financial linkages, and debt restructuring. He also co-authored several IMF policy papers on these topics. He has also published extensively on monetary policy, inclusive growth, short-term output indicators in low-income countries, aid effectiveness, capital flows, and real exchange rate dynamics. And more recently, on the role of digitalization in supervision, fintech, innovation and financial inclusion.
Prior to his tenure at the IMF, Dr Opoku-Afari worked for 13 years at the Bank of Ghana, where he rose to the position of Head of the Special Studies Division in the Research Department and later served as Special Assistant to the Governor. He was also a member of the Ghana Government’s Capital Markets Committee from 2006 to 2008 and played an integral part in the first Eurobond issuance by Ghana in 2007.
Dr Opoku-Afari holds a first degree in Economics and Statistics, an MPhil in Economics, both from the University of Ghana, Legon, and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom. His expertise and leadership have been widely recognized, and he has received numerous awards and honors throughout his career.

He is currently a Fellow (FGA) of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, an honorary fellow of Chartered Institute of Bankers (CIB), the Institute of Directors, Ghana (IoD), and chairs the Advisory Board of the College of Humanities at the University of Ghana.