K.T. de Graft-Johnson: 1929-2015
Kweku Twum de Graft-Johnson was born on 10 July 1929. When he was aged only eight he became partially paralysed from polio, but within two years he had made a remarkable recovery. He attended Mfantsipim School, where his mathematical genius resulted in him winning the mathematics prize every year.
After gaining eight A-grades in his Cambridge School Certificate in 1947, he went on to Achimota Teacher Training College. While he was there, Ghana’s new University College of the Gold Coast was established on the Achimota Campus, and in 1949 he took advantage of this opportunity to register as a student for a degree course. The new university was affiliated to London University, and in 1953 he graduated with a B.Sc. in Special Mathematics.
After graduation he was employed by the Ministry of Education as an Education Officer and was posted to the Government Technical School in Tamale and later to the Government Secondary Technical School, Takoradi, where he taught Mathematics. In 1957 he obtained a Post Graduate Certificate in Education from the University College of the Gold Coast.
In 1959 he transferred to Ghana’s Central Bureau of Statistics in Accra, to assist with the 1960 population census. While in the Civil Service he went to Iowa State University at Ames in the United States, where he obtained his M.Sc., followed by a Ph.D. in Demographic Statistics. On his return to Ghana in 1968 he was appointed Deputy Government Statistician and Census Co-ordinator for the 1970 Population Census.
In 1972 he left the Civil Service for the University of Ghana, where he took up a post as Deputy Director and Associate Professor at the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER). In 1976 he was promoted to a full professorship.
In the early 1970s the International Statistical Institute launched an ambitious programme, known as the World Fertility Survey (WFS), to assist a large number of interested countries, particularly developing countries, to carry out national surveys on human fertility. The WFS secretariat was established in London under the leadership of Maurice Kendall, and De Graft-Johnson was invited to join the key technical advisory committee that was guiding the WFS programme.
In 1978 he was appointed to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, as Project Officer of the African Census Project. In the 11 years he was with the ECA, he was promoted several times, becoming Deputy Chief and finally Chief of the Statistics Division. He retired from the United Nations in 1989.
De Graft-Johnson made important contributions to advancing social statistics internationally, at a time when few official statisticians were interested in social statistics other than census data. Within a short time of his arrival at ECA, the African Household Survey Capability Programme was launched under his direction. This programme, supported by the United Nations, was an attempt to encourage government statistical offices in Africa to develop a programme of surveys, and to maintain a permanent field force, which would help to ensure the generation of high quality data. So successful was this programme in Africa that it was extended in the 1980s to other parts of the world under the title of National Household Survey Capability Programme (NHSCP) with a core group of statistical advisers based in New York.
At a time when few African statisticians were active on the international stage, De Graft-Johnson was an intellectual beacon of hope for the future of statistical work in Africa. He frequently presented incisive papers at international conferences or made telling comments in discussion, and he published widely in the fields of censuses, survey sampling and its application, social statistics and statistical organization.
Kweku de Graft-Johnson was a member of several international statistical and demographic associations including the International Statistical Institute (ISI), the Royal Statistical Society (RSS), the American Statistical Association (ASA), and the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP).
Aside from his statistical work, he was a very private person, and did not talk about himself or his achievements. He was an active member of the Methodist Church and was a founding member of the Board of the Methodist University College in Ghana. Although not a sportsman, he was an enthusiastic supporter of the Manchester United football team, and would be glued to his television set whenever the team played.
Kweku died on 8 May 2015.
This tribute is based on contributions from a number of his colleagues
