On the tenth day of the Adom Brands of the Multimedia Group Limited’s Ghana Month celebration of outstanding Ghanaian personalities, we do a lowdown on the popular athlete and academic, Professor Francis Dodoo.
Many are Ghanaians who have excelled in the field of sports but in listing them, the list will be incomplete without Francis Dodoo who not only made sports attractive but used his experience and expertise to elevate the space.
Who is Francis Dodoo?
It was a beautiful day some 63 years ago when Francis Dodoo was born in Accra to a reserved mother and a historian father on 13th April 1960.
He was fortunate to have a childhood every youngster would dream of.
Mr Dodoo’s father was himself an athlete who also worked at the University of Ghana, Legon where they lived as neighbours to the late Prof Atta Mills.
As a result, he had the privilege of being mentored by the late president who also served as a family lawyer to them.
Mr Dodoo was a promising student who had his secondary education at Achimota College.
At age 19, he gained admission into the University of Ghana where he did not only focus on academics but was involved in sporting activities.
His dream to leave the school after four years was not to be when he was asked to repeat the first year since he was away during examination.
Dodoo ditched his examination to represent the country in hockey with the assurance that he would be made to write upon return, but the administration rescinded their decision at the last minute.
Prior to that, he had received scholarship opportunities to study in institutions abroad, offers he declined.
Feeling heartbroken and betrayed, Dodoo went back to his previous plan and flew out of Ghana, and landed at the University of Idaho.
After five months, he had affiliations with Washington State University.
Decades later, he received his Bachelors and Masters degrees in Economics and a Ph.D. in Demography from the University of Pennsylvania.
He worked in the areas of gender, power and sexual decision-making; demographic and health outcomes associated with urban poverty; inequality issues among Africans in the diaspora; and building research capacity in Africa.
Outside of his academic pursuits, Francis is an ardent lover of sports. It is not surprising sports is embedded in his DNA, especially when he is the son of a two-sport star.
In addition to hockey which he first played, he has skills in track and field, volleyball, basketball, team handball, and cricket.
As a matter of fact, before he turned 15, he had received a call-up to join the National cricket team while he was still in Senior High School.
It was there he also discovered his passion for long and triple jumps.
What many know of him is his achievement in the triple jump but his first love has always been hockey.
At about age 17, he played on the same old Achimota hockey team with the late Prof Mills.
He did not miss his 2-3 days of weekly training at either the National Hockey pitch or 37 hockey pitch after which he was driven around town by his family lawyer cum friend.
The sports fanatic was mentored by Prof Mills who was the then Head of Amalgamated clubs at the University of Ghana.
If for nothing at all, Dodoo remembers the solid advice his mentor gave him to learn how to lose since it is part of the game.
The advice, coupled with the skills he acquired helped him launch his career when he finally left Ghana for America on an athletic scholarship in December 1980.
In the early years of arriving, he invested heavily in tracks and fields and a little bit of volleyball here and there.
However, his hustle wasn’t what he was destined for as his breakthrough came in triple-jump which he less desired.
In a space of one year, he broke the Ghana National Record in the triple jump at the 1981 All-African Games, a title he held on to for the next 11 years.
When he made that 17.12m triple jump, he had no idea he would join the history books and leave the pitch in Nairobi, Kenya as a champion.
He was one of the 6 athletes representing the country to get a medal, but the only gold medalist.
He attained another feat at the 1992 African Championship hosted in Belle Vue Maurel, Mauritius when he came second with a jump of 16.43m.
Thereon, he had multiple opportunities and participated in the Olympics and Commonwealth games of which he was always in the first 30 positions.
Dodoo steadily became the sports saviour for Ghana and his achievements are endless.
Achievements
He is a four-time Olympian and was voted Ghana’s Sportsman of the Year in 1987.
Having vast knowledge and foundation in sports coupled with his service to the nation, he was tipped for the role of Sports Minister in 2009.
Dodoo was elected the President of both Ghana Athletics (GAA) and the Ghana Olympic Committee (GOC)
He was awarded the Grand Medal of the Republic of Ghana in 2006 for his contributions to the country
In addition to his sports laurels, Dodoo excelled academically and was awarded British Global Professorship.
He was the Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research, Innovation and Development at the University of Ghana.
Beyond Ghana, he currently serves as Chair of the African Institute for Development Policy (AFIDEP) board, Chair of the Governance Commission of World Athletics (WA), and as a member of the Governance and Integrity Committee of the Commonwealth Games Foundation (CGF).
Prof Dodoo is a Liberal Arts Research Professor of Sociology and Demography, and the founding Director and Board Chair of the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC) in Kenya.
He was awarded the prestigious British Academy Global Professorship for fellowship at the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science in Oxford University’s Department of Sociology and Nuffield College.
Prof. Dodoo has dual appointments as a Full Professor of Sociology and Demography at the Pennsylvania State University and Professor of Demography at the Regional Institute for Population Studies, University of Ghana.
Prof. Dodoo has also advised the President of Ghana on social and development issues.
Over his career, he has served in various consulting, advisory, review, and other capacities for a number of national governments, international organizations, national funding agencies, and charitable foundations.
He has published over 50 articles in international, peer-reviewed outlets and has made more than 100 scientific presentations at international fora.
He has raised approximately $10m in research and training grant funding.
Prof. Dodoo has directed academic and research programs both in Africa and in the West, served on numerous boards across the world, including those of public and private universities, and a continental research center, and he has chaired the boards of a multi-million dollar national development fund as well as a national statistical agency, where he oversaw the conduct of a national census.
Based on the above backdrop it is safe to say Prof Francis Dodoo is a national treasure worth celebrating.