THE LOUNGE With Kwaku Sakyi-Addo

THE LOUNGE with Kwaku Sakyi-Addo is a weekly live radio and television talk show.  It’s live on Starr103.5FM, Starrfmonline.com and recorded for telecast on GhOne TV.

“It’s intelligent conversations with interesting people over drinks on Friday evenings; pretty simple.” says Kwaku Sakyi-Addo, award-winning broadcaster, who returns to radio and television for the first time in five years.“It’s what people do when the working week is over.  

They meet over drinks and discuss what’s new, what’s going on.  They let their hair down, loosen their tie and kick of their shoes. They debate, they argue, they relax, they laugh, they learn.  That’s what my guests and I will be doing,” says the former international broadcaster of his new comeback show.

It will be a sit-down with a variety of people, two or three at a time: CEOs, sports stars, poets, architects, diplomats, journalists, political leaders, lawyers, painters and musicians.  “We’ll mix them up; we’ll have a spoken word artist with a mathematician; an actor, a politician and a clinical psychologist to show us the difference; a judge and an ex-con with DCOP Kofi Boakye to keep them apart!”Kwaku says with a mischievous chuckle; “That should be fun!”

The maiden edition of “THE LOUNGE” comes to you live from the Equator Bar of the La Palm Royal Beach Hotel in Accra.  Executive Producers of The Lounge areCox Tamakloe and KwekuObeng-Adjei.

PROFILE OF KWAKU SAKYI-ADDO

Kwaku Sakyi-Addo, recipient of the Order of the Volta, is the Chief Executive of the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications.

Until he took up that appointment in 2011, he was General Manager (Communications) of Aqua Vitens Rand, the Dutch-South African Company which managed Ghana Water Company for five years from 2006.

Prior to that, he had been a broadcaster and journalist for 26 years, winning many awards along the way, including twice as Journalist of the Year in 1986 and 1996.  He won it a third time in 2002 but declined it.

He was a freelance correspondent for Reuters, the world’s largest News Agency, from 1998 to 2007, and the BBC World Service from 1993-2007, making him a household name among radio listeners in Africa with his world-class reporting.

Sakyi-Addo worked for print media as well: he was editor-in-chief of the Ghanaian Chronicle from 1993-94.  He wrote the columns “Back to Kokomlemle”, and “Animal Farm” with which he won Columnist of the Year in 1994.

For radio listeners in Ghana, Sakyi-Addo was best associated with “Front Page”, an award-winning weekly current affairs programme he hosted on Joy FM for 16 years from 1995, making it the longest-running talk show hosted by the same person at the time.

He was executive producer and host of “Kwaku One-on-One”, a face-to-face must-watch personality interview programme initially telecast intermittently on GTV and later on TV3 between 1998 and 2010.

Sakyi-Addo began his journalism career as a reporter with the Ghana News Agency in 1984.  He won News Agency Journalist of the Year the following year and overall Journalist of the Year in the subsequent year.

He conducted exclusive interviews with scores of personalities from around the world. They include Presidents Jerry Rawlings (for print), John Kufuor, Jimmy Carter, Charles Taylor, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Ernest Bai Koroma (S. Leone) and MelesZenawi (Ethiopia).  He also interviewedUganda opposition leader KizzaBesigye, rock artist and social activist Bono, TV talk show icon Larry King, boxing promoter Don King, ex-athlete Marion Jones, football great Bobby Charlton, ex-FIFA boss Sepp Blatter, Nobel literature laureate Wole Soyinka, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and his two predecessors Kofi Annan and Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

Sakyi-Addo has travelled widely, including to all six continents of the world.  He covered special media assignments in Haiti, China, Japan, South Korea, Israel, Russia, Libya, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Cuba.

Sakyi-Addo holds an Executive Master of Governance from GIMPA; a Graduate Diploma in Communications from the University of Ghana, and a Diploma in Journalism from the Ghana Institute of Journalism.  He has held international Fellowships at prestigious institutions in Germany, Austria, the UK and the United States.   He went Achimota and Accra High Schools.

He’s a Chevening Scholar, a Fellow of the Aspen Institute’s Global Leadership Network, and a Director of the Africa Leadership Initiative West Africa.

Sakyi-Addo is Vice-President of the Private Enterprise Federation (PEF), and Chair of the Advisory Council of the International Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Ghana.

He also chairs the board of Money Market Fund of InvestCorp, and serves on the governing boards of the Project Management Institute (PMI) Ghana, Africa Democracy Fund, Databank Foundation, Tema International School, the Ghana Cleft Foundation, Databank Foundation and the Ghana Taekwando Federation.

He practices martial arts and plays the sax; heloves nature, running, and Bob Marley.

He’s married to Georgette Barnes; they have three children: AkuaOfeibea, Kofi Oheneand AbenaOforiwa-Baawa.