Abena Osei-Poku

Abena Osei-Poku
Board Chair, Ghana Stock Exchange

Ranked in Avance Media’s 2023 Top 100 Ghana’s Women Board Directors, Abena Osei-Poku is a Ghanaian corporate executive who is widely recognized as one of the leading figures in Ghana’s financial sector. Since September 2018, she has held the position of Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer at Absa Bank Ghana (formerly Barclays Bank of Ghana). Before this, she served as the Managing Director responsible for Corporate & Investment Banking in East and West Africa at Absa in South Africa.

Abena’s academic qualifications include a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and Statistics from the University of Ghana and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom.
She started her banking career at Standard Chartered Bank in 2002, where she worked for seven years. In 2009, she moved to Barclays Bank, where she spent nine years serving as an Executive Director at Barclays Bank Ghana and in South Africa as an executive of the Barclays Africa Group, responsible for operations in Africa outside of South Africa.

Abena has served on the boards of several enterprises, including Airtel Mobile Money Limited, Barclays Africa Group, United Kingdom and Ghana Chamber of Commerce, and Country Kitchen Limited.

Currently, she serves as the Chairperson of the Advisory Board of the College of Health Sciences at the University of Ghana. She is also the Chairperson of the Board of the Ghana Stock Exchange, Vice Chairperson of the Board of Absa Bank Ghana, and a member of the Executive Councils of the Ghana Association of Bankers and the National Banking College. Abena is an Honorary Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing Ghana and an honorary member of the Chartered Institute of Bankers.