Eric Yirenkyi Danquah serves as the Director of the West Africa Centre for Crop Improvement, established in the University of Ghana (UG) in 2007 as a consequence of his shared vision and leadership to train a new generation of plant breeders to develop improved varieties of the staple crops of West and Central Africa. Danquah is a Professor of Plant Genetics at the Department of Crop Science of the College of Basic and Applied Sciences, UG, an adjunct professor at the University of Western Australia, and a visiting scientist at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornell University.

Danquah earned the 2022 Africa Food Prize in recognition of extraordinary efforts to change the reality of farming in Africa. He is a recipient of the University of Ghana Distinguished Award for Meritorious Service, a member of the IAEA’s Standing Advisory Group on Nuclear Applications, the 2018 Laureate of the Global Confederation of Higher Education Associations for Agriculture and Life Sciences (GCHERA) World Agriculture Prize and the President of the African Plant Breeders Association. He has over two decades of experience leading and advising genetic diversity and crops research.

He holds a BSc. degree in Agriculture (Crop Science) from the University of Ghana, and, an MPhil degree in Plant Breeding and a PhD in Genetics from the University of Cambridge, UK.