Samuel Kofi Date-Bah

Samuel Date-Bah, a justice professor, was born in Ghana on February 26, 1943. He enrolled in Achimota School in 1956 and graduated in 1962. He was admitted to the University of Ghana, Legon, Law Faculty in 1963 and earned both a Barrister at Law (BL.) Diploma and an LL.B. with First Class Honors by the time he graduated in 1965.He went straight to Yale Law School in the US, where he earned an LL.M. in 1967 and a Ph.D. in law from the London School of Economics, University of London, in 1969. In 1966, he received a call to the Ghana Bar.

He taught a range of subjects, including Contract, Tort, Commercial Law, and Public International Law, between 1969 and 1984. He held academic positions at the University of Ghana's Faculty of Law from 1969 to 1981, the University of Nairobi's Faculty of Commercial Law from 1979 to 1980, and the University of Calabar's Faculty of Private Law from 1980 to 1984. He also held visiting academic positions at Lincoln College, Oxford University (1972), Yale Law School (1976), and the University of Fribourg, Switzerland (1998).

Representative of the Ghanaian government to the UN Commission on International Trade Law in the 1970s. In 1978, he was chosen to lead the commission.

Between 1984 and 2003 Professor Date-Bah was the Special Adviser (Legal) at the Commonwealth Secretariat, London responsible for effective legal advisory and negotiating services to the developing member states of the Commonwealth. He played instrumental role as leader of a multidisciplinary Commonwealth Secretariat team which assisted the first independence Government of Namibia to negotiate a joint-venture agreement with De Beers that has been the bedrock of the Namibian economy since then; and several petroleum exploration agreements with international petroleum companies on behalf of the government.