Brief History

The Ghana Publishers Association formally came into being on 10^th March, 1976 as a registered non-governmental organisation to operate by the Registrar-General’s Department. The original executives and the founding publishing houses were: Mr. Courage Kwami Segbawu (Sedco Publishing Ltd), Mr. N. Adzakey (Ghana Universities Press), Mr. Abdul Brown (Ghana Publishing Corporation), Mr. Kwesi Sam-Woode (Afram Publications (Gh) Ltd.), Mr. Benibengor Blay (Benibengor Book Agency), and Mr. Mark Botsio (Ringway Press). Mr. Courage Kwami Segbawu, the founder of Sedco Publishing Ltd, was made the first President of the Association.

More History

The beginning of the Ghana Publishers Association (GPA) dates back to 1973, when the membership was mainly of local representatives of overseas, mostly British publishing multinationals. However, when well organised indigenous publishing houses began to emerge, the status of the overseas publishers’ representatives as publishers became unclear and this led to a certain amount of misunderstanding and loss of interest in the Association.

In 1976, there was a policy in Acheampong’s regime, that all foreign publishing and printing houses must be headed by Ghanaians. Consequently, some of the foreign publishing firms were converted into local publishing firms. As a result of this, the Association had a challenge with organised membership. For this reason, the Ghana Book Development Council (GBDC) researched into the background of the Association and made recommendations on how it could be reorganised on a sound footing. This was in the first half of 1977. On 10th April, 1978 a new constitution of GPA was accepted and officers and members of the Association’s Executive Council elected.

The name of the Association was changed from Ghana Publishers Association (GPA) to Ghana Book Publishers Association (GBPA) when a new constitution was adopted by the members in 1978. The Ghana Publishers Association since its inception has had a number of Presidents supported by other Council members to make decisions for implementation by the Secretariat.

List of Presidents since inception to date

Years in Office	Name of GPA Presidents	No. of Years
1976 – 1980	Mr. Courage Kwami Segbawu	4
1980 – 1986	Mr. Emmanuel Charles Tetteh	6
1987 – 1991	Mr. Eric Ofei	4
1992 – 1998	Mr. Richard Crabbe	6
1998 – 2002	Mr. Courage Kwami Segbawu	4
2003 – 2005	Ms. Akoss Ofori-Mensah	2
2005 – 2009	Mr. Elliot Agyare	4
2009 – 2014	Mr. Asare Konadu Yamoah	4
2014 – 2016	Dr. Samuel Osafo Acquaah	2
2016 – 2019	Mr. Elliot Agyare	4
2020 to date	Mr. Asare Konadu Yamoah

For all these years, the GPA was spineless but in 1991 the Canadian Organization for Development through Education (CODE) came to the aid with massive and timely institutional support, which enabled the association to offer something in return for the dues members had paid and had become weary of paying. The first time the Association had a massive support.

Currently, the Association has well-organised member-publishers with capacity to publish all types of books including educational and trade books. The Association has undergone a lot of developmental stages in terms of membership drive; training, advocacy and trade promotion programmes (achievements) and professionalism and now Ghana is said to be one of the African countries with robust publishing industries. The name of the Association was Ghana Book Publishers Association until Friday 8th November, 2019 when the constitution and the name was amended to The Ghana Publishers Association.