In 1969 he joined Lintas W.A. Ltd., Accra, as a Client Service Executive and a radio and television producer.

He was appointed joint General Manager in 1972 the youngest head of unit of any Unilever Company. In 1974 he became Managing Director of Lintas Ghana Ltd., a wholly Ghanaian owned company that took over the operations of Lintas W.A. Limited.

He built up and was the Chief Executive of the Advantage Group of Companies, which included Lintas Ghana Ltd., Afromedia Ghana Ltd., Research International Ltd., Pro Design Ghana Ltd., Advantage Production, Advantage Public Relations, Afromedia Liberia Inc. and Afromedia Sierra Leone Limited. He remained the C.E.O. until entering government service in January 2001.

He is a leading authority on Social Marketing and has worked on programmes on Population/Contraceptives, HIV/AIDS and Malaria in a number of countries for, among others, The Futures Group, Population Services International (PSI) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

He has several publications to his credit and has written and produced a number of films including “AIDS NEED FOR ACTION NOW” in 1986, which was successfully used by the World Health Organization (WHO) to bring the developing menace to the attention of opinion leaders in Africa and elsewhere.

As a politician he has been the Chairman of the Publicity Committee of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) from 1992 to 1999 and he served as the Greater Accra Regional Chairman of the NPP from 1997 until he relinquished the role in 2005. He was the National Campaign Manager of the electoral battle that brought President John Agyekum Kufuor and the NPP to power in 2001 and again to retain office in the 2004 General Elections.

He was appointed Chief of Staff to the President in February 2001 and subsequently as Minister for Presidential Affairs. He was made Minister for Information Presidential Affairs in October 2001. He is currently the Minister of Tourism & Diasporan Relations.

He captained the National Squash Racquets Team and also played cricket for Ghana. He now plays at golf, reads widely and enjoys music.

He is married with children.

Vision

“I see Ghana as the RESPECTED CAPITAL OF THE AFRICAN PEOPLE,
” says Jake.
“You cannot be a respected capital whilst you are still a beggar nation. We must produce what we consume and produce more if we want to consume more.

“You cannot be a respected capital if your people do not have self confidence. Therefore we must be better educated, better trained and more in charge of our lives.

“We have too many people begging in Ghana we must bake a bigger economic cake so that everyone can have a bigger slice. “You cannot be a respected capital if you do not respect yourself. “We must give people the chance to be responsible for themselves and their dependants.
 
 
“We must create A NEW ECONOMY. The old economy has brought us this far. It was good when it was catering for less than ten million people. Today we are twenty-two million, in twenty years time we will be 44 million.

“You cannot be a respected capital if you are dirty. Today our country is filthy. We must clean it and keep it clean.

 
 
This is all very nice but how will Jake do all these fine things?

“By changing the structure of our economy,” says Jake. “We were really messed up. J.A. Kufuor has stopped the rot and given as a platform for launch.

“At this stage too many people are still looking to agriculture as our major economic pillar. “However, Agriculture, by itself or even as the main pillar of our economy will not take us to the level we need to reach. Especially it will not do so in the time we have available. Our millions and millions of young people cannot wait that long.
“We must use what we have now, agriculture, cocoa, mining and remittances from the Ghanaian Diaspora to create new pillars of growth.

Tourism, Services, Agric Processing for Export
“In ten years if we work at it, we could be doing half as well in tourism as Malaysia is doing today. By doing that we will generate more than fifteen billion dollars per year of export earnings

“In 2006, oil rich Nigeria had earnings of US$17bn from oil exports. Malaysia earned US$36bn from tourism. “Everything that Malaysia has, from God and nature, we have: Hospitality, people, culture, history, forest, rivers, beaches, food, clothing, etc.
 
“But we have even more we are less than 7hours from Northern Europe and in the same time zone, and only ten hours from the East Coast of America where we have 40million African Americans who spend US$40bn a year on travel and tourism.
“Every one of our regions has more tourism potential than some countries that have tourism as their major foreign exchange earner. “ICT software development, call centres and services are other areas from which we can generate significant wealth in jobs and money.

“Our tourism industry can be the foundation of our agro-processing for export. Tourism will help us to set the needed quality standards that will see more and more of our produce on the shelves of shops and in Ghanaian restaurants around the world.

Source: Jake 2008