Alan John Kwadwo Kyerematen (born October 3, 1955) is a Ghanaian politician. He served as Ghana’s Minister for Trade and Industry from 2017 to 2023. Kyerematen was Ghana's Ambassador to the United States and later Minister of Trade and Industry, Private Sector Development (PSD), and Presidential Special Initiatives (PSI) during President John Kufuor's administration. Kyerematen has served as a trade advisor at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he coordinated the African Trade Policy Centre (ATPC).
Kyerematen made an attempt at the leadership of the New Patriotic Party in 2007, capturing 32.3% of votes cast. He was the first runner-up to Nana Akufo-Addo who gained 47.96% of votes cast. Kyerematen made other attempts at the party's leadership in 2010 and 2014 but placed second to Akufo-Addo, who won the primaries. In 2012, Ghana nominated Kyerematen for the post of WTO director-general to succeed out-going director-general Pascal Lamy, and his candidature received the backing of the African Union (AU). However, he did not make the shortlist for the final selection process in 2013.
Early life
Alan John Kwadwo Kyerematen was born on 3 October 1955 to Alexander Atta Yaw Kyerematen, a social anthropologist from Patasse, Kumasi, and Victoria Kyerematen (née Welsing) from Elmina and Ejisu. He was named after an archbishop in the Church of England, Alan John Knight who was the headmaster of the all-boys Anglican boarding school, Adisadel College in Cape Coast in the 1930s, and a mentor to his father, Alexander A. Y. Kyerematen who was then a student there and later, a head boy in his final year. In 1951, his father was the founder and first director of the Centre for National Culture located in Kumasi of the Ashanti Region and later on, he was appointed the mayor of Kumasi and then Commissioner for local government between 1966 and 1969 during the National Liberation Council regime.
Like his father before him, Alan Kyerematen attended Adisadel College for his secondary education, entering the institution at the record age of nine years after starting at then Asokore Mampong Secondary School now Kumasi Academy. He attended Achimota School afterward for his sixth form education. He proceeded to the University of Ghana, Legon for a bachelor's degree in Economics. Kyerematen also holds a law degree, LLB from the Ghana Law School at the same university where he qualified as a barrister-at-Law. He was called to the bar in Ghana and is a practicing attorney-at-law in Ghana. In addition, he is a Hubert Humphrey fellow of the School of Management at the University of Minnesota, U.S., having completed one year of management studies under the Fulbright Fellowship program at that institution.
Corporate career
Alan John Kyerematen has had an extensive career in both the private and public sectors spanning over twenty-four years. He was a senior corporate executive with a subsidiary of Unilever International in Ghana where he became a junior manager at the age of twenty-two years becoming the youngest manager at Unilever. He also worked for several years as a principal consultant and head of Public Systems Management with one of the leading management development institutions in Ghana, the Management Development and Productivity Institute (MDPI).
In 1998, Kyerematen was appointed by the UNDP as the first regional director of Enterprise Africa, which was an Africa-wide, flagship initiative for the development and promotion of small and medium enterprises. Under that framework, he established enterprise support institutions and programmes in 13 Sub-Saharan Africa countries - Botswana, Benin, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda. Over 4,000 African entrepreneurs and small businesses have benefited from these programmes.
In 1990, Kyerematen established and managed the EMPRETEC Programme in Ghana, a business development programme sponsored by the United Nations and Barclays Bank. EMPRETEC turned from a UN project into an independent foundation, with him as its founding chief executive. Between 1984 and 1990, he participated in and managed several major private and public sectors consulting assignments in Ghana, as a principal consultant and head of Public Systems Management with the Management Development and Productivity Institute (MDPI), a leading management development institution in Ghana. Before this, he was a senior corporate executive with UAC Ghana Ltd, a subsidiary of Unilever International, where he worked in various managerial positions with distinction until 1984.