Starting with the likes of John Mensah Sarbah and Henry Van Hein, Mfantsipim School has produced an impressive line of lawyers. Ace Anan Ankomah is a member of this prestigious lineage.
Ace entered Mfantsipim in 1979 and graduated after Sixth Form in 1986. He was the Senior Scholar of that graduating class. He was in Sarbah-Picot House from Form 1 to 5, and in Balmer-Acquaah for the sixth form.
After leaving Mfantsipim, he entered the University of Ghana, where he obtained his Bachelor of Laws (LL.B in 1990, followed by his Qualification Certificate in Law from the Ghana Law School in 1992. He followed that with a Master’s of Laws in International Taxation from Queen’s University, Canada.
He returned home to Ghana after his master’s and in 1995 joined a young law firm founded five years earlier by the lawyers Kojo Bentsi-Enchill and Divine Letsa – Bentsi-Enchill & Letsa. Ace has worked at this law firm till today. In 2000, he became a partner of the group, and in 2004, the firm changed its name to Bentsi-Enchill, Letsa & Ankomah. Six years later, he became the firm’s managing partner, a role he held until 2021, when he transitioned to Senior Partner, a position he still holds.
Ace started at the firm by helping build its now-formidable legal-technology subsidiary, “DataCenta”. Among other things, this entity houses an impressive compendium of legal cases for reference. He soon transitioned to what would become his forte – litigation. He has run the Disputes group at the firm for a long time. He is responsible for preparing and handling trials and arbitrations of contentious cases in Ghana and internationally. In that he has represented clients as varied as Achimota School, International Finance Corporation, Bank of Ghana, Abosso Goldfields, Exim Bank, NML Capital Limited, Vitol, Ecobank, Deloitte & Touche, AngloGold Ashanti, Vodafone, Volta Aluminum Company/Kaiser, Western Telesystems, Deloitte, Fortiz, and Balkan Energy.
One famous case he was involved in had him seize an Argentinian warship in Ghana for military exercises in 2012 on behalf of the hedge fund NML Capital for unpaid Argentine sovereign debt. The case played out before the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) and the Supreme Court in Ghana. Ultimately, a $2.4 billion settlement was reached.
In 2014, he was part of the legal team that secured a $50 million award for Bankswitch Ghana in a breach-of-contract case.
He was also Instrumental in the Supreme Court of Ghana overturning a $16 million judgment in a land dispute between Vodafone Ghana and Chief Ogyeedom Obranu Kwasi Atta IV of Gomoa Afransie in 2023.
Ace has built a formidable reputation as an expert in dispute resolution, corporate law, taxation, and civil litigation and procedure.
Beyond his work on trials and arbitrations, he taught at the Ghana Law School from 2005 to 2012. In 2015, the University of Ghana instituted the Ace Anan Ankomah Prize in Constitutional Law in his honor.
An ardent advocate of social justice and good governance, he helped found the pressure group “OccupyGhana” in 2014. One significant achievement of the group is seen in the case “OccupyGhana V. Attorney-General (2017)” that went before the Ghana Supreme Court. The justices ruled that it is the Auditor-General’s mandatory duty to issue disallowances and surcharges to recover public funds lost to negligence or illegal expenditure.
His legal expertise and experience as a litigator led him to serve on the International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce. Also, besides serving on the board of Lex Mundi (the world’s leading network of independent law firms), he has served and sits on various boards and advisory boards in Ghana. He is a member of the Ghana Bar Association and the ICSID Panel of Arbitrators.
He is also a Fellow of the Aspen Global Leadership Network (AGLN), Africa Leadership Initiative, West Africa (ALIWA), and the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among the many awards he has won include being named to Africa’s 20 Arbitration Powerlist in 2022 and elected to the Legal 500 “Hall of Fame” for Dispute Resolution in 2025.
Outside of work, Ace is a prolific writer (law books and non-law books), a speaker, and an accomplished musician, producer, and multi-instrumentalist. He plays the piano, saxophone, and guitar. A member of Joyful Way since his time in Mfantsipim, the group has allowed him to hone his skills. His latest work in music includes co-writing and producing the “Jama song” for Mfantsipim’s 150th anniversary and producing the anniversary anthem.
In all he does, Ace embodies the Mfantsipim can-do spirit. He surmounted challenges like a stutter to become a great speaker and an aversion to math to graduate from Mfantsipim with flying colors. His hard work, patience, perseverance, and faith are qualities that are beaten into the boys on the hill, and he imbued and now epitomizes all of them.
Ace Ankomah is an illustrious son of Mfantsipim, a Botwe boy.