Founding Partner
Godfred Yeboah Dame is the immediate past Attorney-General and Minister for Justice of the Republic of Ghana (the youngest to hold the eminent office on being appointed in March, 2021 at the age of 41 years). He is a founding Partner of Dame & Partners.
He is a Christian and married to Dr Joycelyn Assimeng Dame with whom he has two children.
His quiet and respectful demeanour is celebrated by friends, associates and family.
Godfred’s experience in law practice, since being called to the Bar over twenty-two (22) years ago (2003), has been a rich miscellany of accomplishments in both the private and public sectors. In this period, he has carved a reputation as a fierce and creative advocate in private law practice capable of achieving solutions for clients. He comes with immense expertise in company law, commercial law, international arbitration, doing business with the State, energy and natural resources law, property law, constitutional law and laws governing the public sector.
He commenced his professional law practice with the elite law firm of Messrs. Akufo-Addo, Prempeh & Co. Quite rapidly, he specialised in various aspects of civil litigation and established himself as one of Ghana’s leading advocates, conducting with a remarkable degree of success many important trials and cases in all the Superior Courts of Ghana, particularly the Supreme Court, on behalf of a number of companies of repute in Ghana, some multi-national corporations and high profile individuals.
In 2006, in recognition of his contribution towards the defence of media and human rights, rule of law and civil liberties generally in Ghana, Godfred was one of 5 lawyers from across Africa who, together with others from the rest of the world, were awarded the Open Society Initiative Fellowship, and were selected to pursue the Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy (PCMLP) at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Socio-Legal Studies. He returned to Ghana upon completion of the course to continue his active law practice, which saw him take charge of many high profile and landmark cases, advancing the frontiers of constitutional law, commercial law, succession and trusts, corporate practice and good governance in Ghana, including serving as counsel for the New Patriotic Party (NPP) between 2012 and 2016.
From 2011 to 2016, he taught Company Law and Practice at the Ghana School of Law which he combined with a private law practice. In 2014, he was appointed a member of the Ghana Bar Association’s legal team responsible for advising the Ghana Bar on legal matters of public importance as well as the pursuit of cases officially involving the Ghana Bar.
In January, 2017, he was appointed a teacher in Advocacy and Legal Ethics at the Ghana School of Law, a commitment he was unable to fulfill owing to his nomination as Deputy Attorney-General and Deputy Minister for Justice for the Republic of Ghana a few weeks later. He distinguished himself from 2017 to 2021 as Deputy Attorney-General and Minister for Justice, ably representing the Republic of Ghana in many high-profile cases and managing transactions with huge consequence for the Republic, especially in natural resources.
As a keen football enthusiast, between 2009 and 2017, Godfred assisted with the development of Ghana football by taking up a number of offices in the Ghana Football Association, including Vice-Chairman of the Disciplinary Committee of the Ghana Football Association and member of the Elections Committee. Prior to that, from 2008 to 2009, he had been Chairman of the Greater-Accra Regional Football Association’s Disciplinary Committee. By sheer coincidence, in 2018, as Deputy Attorney-General, he led the effort of the Government to dissolve the Ghana Football Association following a corruption expose by a leading investigative journalist in Ghana, setting the stage for the building of a new relatively corruption-free football administration in Ghana.
In January, 2021, Godfred Yeboah Dame was nominated by the President and confirmed by the Parliament of Ghana in March, 2021 as the Attorney-General and Minister for Justice of the Republic, a position he held until January, 2025. To date, he remains the youngest person in the history of Ghana to hold the office of Attorney-General of Ghana, having been appointed in March, 2021, at the age of 41 years.
Godfred Dame’s tenure as Ghana’s Attorney-General and Minister for Justice of Ghana witnessed a period of transformational leadership, as he practically demonstrated the ability to use law as an instrument for advancement and change of the Ghanaian society and Ghana’s relations with the investment community. He believed in the strength of Ghana’s legal talent and that, Africans are capable of conducting cases on the international stage and brokering transactions by themselves without the aid of foreign legal minds. He practically demonstrated this by building the capacity of the Office of the Attorney-General and leading that office to defend claims against the Government of Ghana in various international arbitration fora without recourse to foreign legal representation. Godfred personally led the defence of the Republic of Ghana in actions at the Permanent Court of Arbitration, International Chamber of Commerce, ad hoc international arbitration fora and the African Court of Human Rights. He is reputed to have saved the Republic of Ghana billions of United States Dollars in judgment debt through his diligent defence of civil claims.
Godfred initiated many processes to reform various areas of Ghanaian law to reduce the burden of unwarranted judgment debts, by spearheading the passage of the Contracts (Amendment) Act, 2023 (Act 1114). By this law, public officers in Ghana are prohibited from entering into a contract on behalf of the State in which the rate of interest is stipulated as compound interest. He ensured the operationalisation of the Ghana Alternative Dispute Resolution Centre, a statutory requirement under the Alternative Dispute Resolution Act of 2010 (Act 798), which had been outstanding since 2010. The establishment of the Alternative Dispute Resolution Centre presents a viable opportunity for the resolution of commercial disputes and cases involving the use of Ghana’s natural resources in Ghana.
In 2024, Godfred presented to Cabinet, as part of the processes for the passage into law, a Bill to amend the State (Property and Contracts) Act, 1960 (CA 4). This Bill sought to reform the laws governing arbitration whenever the State and its agencies were party to such proceedings. Further, he spearheaded the passage of the Criminal and Other Offences (Procedure) (Amendment) Act, 2022 (Act 1079) by which plea bargaining was formally introduced into the criminal jurisprudence of Ghana as a mechanism to speed up the administration of justice and ease congestions in the courts of Ghana. He introduced into Parliament the Criminal and Other Offences (Procedure) (Amendment) Bill, to speed up the administration of criminal justice in the country by introducing a raft of reforms.
Godfred’s rich experience on the frontier of Ghanaian public legal service includes membership of Cabinet from 2021 to 2025, service on the Governing Boards of the Public Procurement Authority, the Public-Private Partnership Committee, the National Security Council, the Police Council, the Judicial Council, the General Legal Council, the Board of Legal Education, the Legal Service Board and the University of Ghana Medical Centre.
In August, 2022 he laid the building blocks for the transformation of two very important institutions for justice delivery in Ghana and their financial independence – the Legal Aid Commission and the Law Reform Commission – by ensuring the establishment of the Legal Aid Commission Fund and the Law Reform Commission Fund.
In March 2025, following his exit from public office after a democratic change of power in Ghana, Godfred Yeboah Dame reactivated Dame & Partners, a private law firm based in Accra, which he had formed in 2017 (but whose operations he chose to freeze) following his appointment as Deputy Attorney-General and Deputy Minister for Justice in 2017.
In Dame & Partners, Godfred Dame seeks to inspire universal confidence in the legal talent of the African and place the firm strongly on the global legal map through the provision of services which have competence, creativity, integrity and diligence as their hallmark.
Watching sports is a regular pastime for Godfred Dame.