Joe K. Mensah

Joe K. Mensah is Senior Vice President and Head of the Ghana Business Unit at Kosmos Energy, the independent oil and gas company whose Ghana interests include the offshore Jubilee and TEN fields. He is responsible for the overall performance of the Ghana business, for relationships with partners, government and civil society, and for the company’s social investment programmes, including the Kosmos Innovation Center (KIC). He serves on the Advisory Board of the Africa Energy Technology Centre (AETC).

Mensah joined Kosmos in July 2015 as Vice President and Country Manager for Ghana, succeeding Ken Keag, and was promoted to Senior Vice President and Head of the Ghana Business Unit in November 2019. Before that he spent more than 30 years with IBM, in the United States and in Ghana, holding leadership roles in sales and marketing before establishing IBM’s presence in Ghana in 2009 and serving as its country general manager. At IBM Ghana he helped to improve the IT infrastructure of the Ghana government and of key financial institutions.

He holds a Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering and a Master of Business Administration, both from Yale University. Mensah was elected President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ghana in 2015, and he chaired the Council of the Ghana Upstream Petroleum Chamber, the body representing companies in Ghana’s upstream petroleum industry, until June 2026, when he handed over the chair and remained a council member. He also chairs the board of the Kosmos Innovation Center, which supports young entrepreneurs and agricultural small businesses in West Africa.

His public comments have focused on long-term investment in Ghana’s upstream sector, local content and gas. He has argued for continued exploration to sustain production, for more Ghanaians in expert and leadership roles across the industry, and that gas could transform Ghana’s economy as it did that of Trinidad and Tobago. In 2025 the Jubilee and TEN partners agreed with the Government of Ghana to extend the field licences to 2040, allowing up to 20 new wells and up to US$2 billion of investment, and Ghana’s Parliament ratified the extensions in February 2026.