Jacob Otanka Obetsebi-Lamptey

Jacob Lantei Otanka "Jake" Obetsebi-Lamptey (4 February 1946 – 20 March 2016) was a Ghanaian politician, and a television and radio producer.

Biography

Born in Accra, Ghana, the second son of Emmanuel Obetsebi-Lamptey (a prominent lawyer and politician) and his Dutch wife Margaretha, Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey had his primary education in Accra, before travelling to England to further his education.

In 1966, he began work as a radio and TV scriptwriter, commentator and presenter at the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC). In 1969, he joined Lintas West African, an advertising firm, as an account executive and radio and television producer. As Client Service Manager of Lintas in Ghana in 1971, he wrote, co-ordinated and executed Family Planning, Motivation Campaign for the Ghana National Family Planning Programme. Obetsebi-Lamptey was appointed General Manager of Lintas in Ghana in 1974 and thereafter worked on a number of programmes for the company and others in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Kenya.

From 1984 to 1999, he worked with the World Health Organization (WHO). Obetsebi-Lamptey was the Plenary Speaker at the World Summit on AIDS, London, and Second International Symposium on the disease in Yaoundé, Cameroon. He is a past president of the Advertising Association of Ghana, and has several publications to his credit, covering topics from family planning to AIDS prevention in Africa.

From 2005 to July 2007, Obetsebi-Lamptey served as Minister of Tourism and Diasporan Relations in the cabinet of President John Kufuor. Previously Obetsebi-Lamptey was Minister of Tourism and Modernization of the Capital (2002–05) and Minister of Information (2001–02). He was the National Campaign Manager of the victorious New Patriotic Party (NPP) during the 2000 Presidential elections, which saw the first constitutional (civilian-to-civilian) transition of power in that country.

He resigned his posts in July 2007 to campaign for the NPP nomination for the 2008 Presidential elections. As of February 2010, he was the National Chairman of the NPP.

Obetsebi-Lamptey died at a hospital in London on 20 March 2016 at the age of 70. He had been suffering from leukemia and in December had received treatment in South Africa after becoming unwell.