Emily Akumah

Emily Akumah is a Ghanaian occupational safety and health (OSH) professional who writes on workplace safety and OSH policy in Ghana under her full name, Emily Esenam Akumah. She serves on the Advisory Board of the Africa Energy Technology Centre (AETC).

Akumah began her working life in 2007 as a student nurse. Seeing the after-effects of work-related accidents and illnesses in hospital led her to look for ways to prevent them, and she moved into occupational safety and health. She holds a master’s degree in occupational safety and health management from Brunel University London, which included an offshore internship with Aker Solutions in Norway. In April 2023 the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) profiled her among ten OSH professionals from across the Commonwealth, marking the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) adoption of a safe and healthy working environment as a fundamental principle and right at work.

Her work has centred on OSH policy and professional development in Ghana and the wider region. She helped stage the Vision Zero Ghana event, which brought members of the global OSH community to Accra to discuss the future of OSH in Africa, and has served as an external collaborator on OSH in Ghana for the ILO’s ACCEL Africa project.

In articles marking the World Day for Safety and Health at Work, Akumah has argued that Ghana needs a comprehensive national OSH policy of the kind set out in ILO Convention 155, overseen by a national body with the powers and resources to manage OSH across the country, and that more Ghanaians should take up professional OSH education and qualifications. She has pointed to market fires, road traffic accidents and explosions such as the one at Appiatse in 2022 as evidence of the cost of weak systems, and has called for stronger social dialogue towards a culture of safety and health, citing the planned Ghana National OSH Summit as a platform for it.