I am a trained accountant, having quaified as Chartered Certified Accountant. I am a Fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (FCCA). I also hold a degree in Accounting Studies from Thames Valley University. I am a consultant at Rocksons, Chartered Certified Accountants, Barking, East London. I work on SMEs within the charity sector and NGO accounts in the firm.

My formative years were in Accra, Ghana. I was privileged to be amongst the first crop of students to benefit from free secondary school education under the revolutionary leadership of Ghana’s first president Dr Kwame Nkrumah.

I was a student leader in Ghana. I was the Greater Accra Regional Secretary of the Ghana United Nations Students Association (GUNSA) when I was a student at the Institute of Professional Studies IPS (now University of Professional Studies, UPSA) in Accra where I started my accountancy studies in 1971. I later proceeded to the UK to complete my studies.

While at secondary school, I was fortunate to be taken under the wings of Professor Ablade Glover, the eminent Ghanaian artist and art educator who was then the Dean of the College of Arts at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana. Professor Glover, now retired, runs the Omanye Gallery in Accra. His paintings could be found in such diverse places as O’Hare International airport, Chicago, USA and among the Royal collections of the Japanese Royal family, in Japan. My association with Prof Glover aroused my interest in the arts and history.

I arrived in the UK over four decades ago to complete my accountancy education and return to the motherland. Unfortunately, military coups and instability in Ghana truncated my desire to return home. I joined Centerprise Trust Ltd, the then Dalston-based community and arts centre in Hackney as Finance Officer. I later led a restructuring process of the organisation and became its CEO. The organisation went into hibernation when the local authority, Hackney Council, under the leadership of Mayor Jules Pipe, seized its building illegally in 2012.

 
During my time at Centerprise, I was Chair of Hackney Cultural Forum which was the lead body in the central government’s ‘Local Strategic Partnership’ in charge of policy development and implementation of the Borough’s arts and cultural policy from 2004-2007.

Centerprise was the lead organisation in the development of ‘Hackney Mare de Gras’, a carnival and street parade that celebrated the Borough’s cultural diversity for ten years starting in 1998 as part of events marking the European Year Against Racism (EYAR). In 2008 Hackney Council decided to take over the festival, and rename it ‘Hackney One Carnival’. To date it remains an annual feature in the Borough’s cultural calendar.
In 2008, as part of the Commemoration of the Bicentenary of the Parliamentary Abolition of the Slave-trade by the British government, Centerprise organised,’ WordPower, International Black Literature Festival and Book Fair’. The festival which was a celebration of black cultural and literary excellence, brought together writers, academics, poets, historians of African heritage from the Caribbean, USA and Canada, Europe and Africa to discuss and share experiences of their works at The Emirates, Arsenal Football Stadium Conference Rooms, in North London under my leadership.

I also currently run a mobile and online bookshop dealing in black history books, while pursuing a Masters Research programme in the History of Africa and its Diaspora at the University of Chicheser, Chichester, UK. 

Please visit my site @ www.blackhistorybooks.uk