Justice Sophia Akuffo was born on 20th December 1949. She received her secondary school education at Parliament Hill School, Hampstead, London and Wesley Girls’ High School. She holds an LLB degree from the Faculty of Law, University of Ghana, and an LLM degree from Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. After qualifying as a Barrister-at-Law Ghana, in 1975, she performed her National Service at the Legal and Consular Section of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ghana.
Thereafter, she worked with the Law firms, U. V. Campbell & Co., and W. E. Fugar & Co. She then joined Ghana Airways Corporation, as a Legal Officer and Deputy Corporation Secretary, from 1979 to 1982. She then worked with Mobil Oil Ghana Limited, where she functioned as Legal & Relations Manager/Company Secretary for the Mobil Oil Ghana Group (which included Mobil Oil Liberia Ltd and Mobil Oil Sierra Leone Ltd.) from 1982 to 1992. She established her private Law Firm, Akuffo Legal Consultancy (now Apex Law Consult) and practiced as a Legal Consultant from 1992 to November 1995 when she was elevated to the Supreme Court Bench.
In February 2006, she was elected as one of the pioneering Judges of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and was sworn in with other members of the Court in July 2006. She was elected the Vice President of the Court for a statutory term of 2 years in September 2008 and again in 2010. She was elected the President of the Court in September 2012, for a statutory term of two years, after which in 2014, she completed her term as a Judge of the Court.
She has held various positions on various Boards, Commissions and Committees over the years, both in Ghana and in the African Union. She became the Chief Justice of the Republic of Ghana on June 2017 to December 2019.