Samuel Arthur Odoi-Sykes has held several roles in Ghanaian public life: student activist, diplomat, Member of Parliament and party chairman. He led the New Patriotic Party (NPP) as National Chairman when it won its first presidential and parliamentary elections in December 2000.
Odoi-Sykes was born in Accra in 1928 and attended Accra Academy, finishing in 1948. He took a BA in History at the University of Ghana in 1959 and later qualified as a Barrister-at-Law at the Inner Temple in London before being called to the Ghana Bar. He also completed a diploma in American Foreign Policy at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
His political activity began as a student. Between 1957 and 1959, he founded and led the student wing of the United Party, and in 1958–59 he was General Secretary of the National Union of Ghana Students. He then worked as a teacher at Abuakwa State College in Kyebi and as an information officer in the Ministry of Information.
In 1961, he joined the Foreign Service, starting as First Secretary at the Ghana High Commission in New Delhi. He became Press Attaché at the Ghana Embassy in Washington, D.C. in 1963 and later headed information services for the United States and the Caribbean. Back in Accra, he directed the Overseas Information Directorate at the Foreign Ministry. He served as Minister-Counsellor and Deputy Ambassador in Moscow in 1969–70, then as Deputy High Commissioner in London from 1970 to 1972. When the 1972 coup closed the London mission, he joined the Commonwealth Secretariat as a senior administrative officer.
He returned to elected politics in 1978, winning a Greater Accra local council seat. A founding member of the Popular Front Party, he became MP for Ashiedu Keteke (Accra Central) in the Third Republic, serving from 1979 to 1981. From 1980 he led the party in Parliament and served as Minority Leader.
He later helped found the NPP. He chaired its Greater Accra branch from 1995 to 1998 and then served as National Chairman from 1998 to 2001, a period that ended with the party’s historic win in the 2000 elections.
President John Kufuor then nominated him as High Commissioner to Canada. He served in Ottawa from October 2001 to 2006, and Margaret Amoakohene succeeded him.
