Biographical Note

Secretary-General Appoints Major General Delali Johnson Sakyi of Ghana

 

Force Commander, United Nations Mission in South Sudan

 

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced today the appointment of Major General Delali Johnson Sakyi of Ghana as the Force Commander for the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS).

Major General Sakyi succeeds Major General Moses Bisong Obi of Nigeria, who completed his assignment on 18 November 2012 and had served both UNMISS and the United Nations Mission in the Sudan (UNMIS).  The Secretary-General is grateful for his significant contribution to both missions over the past two years and seven months, a critical period that saw the successful conclusion of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), the peaceful holding of the Southern Sudan self-determination referendum and the birth of a new nation.

With more than 34 years of military command and staff experience at the national and international levels, Major General Sakyi was most recently, since January 2012, Assistant Commandant of the Ghana Armed Forces Command and Staff College, Junior Division.  He previously served as Commander of the Army Combat Training School.  During 1979 and 2011, Major General Sakyi held command positions from platoon to brigade level and staff positions in the Ghana Armed Forces and operational-level headquarters.

He served as the Abidjan Sector Commander of the United Nations Operation in Côte d’Ivoire (UNOCI) in 2008, and as Commander of the Ghana contingent in several peacekeeping missions:  the Second United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF II) in 1979; the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in 1986 and 1993; the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) in 1995; and the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) in both Liberia and Sierra Leone from 1998 to 1999.  He also served the United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC) from 2002 to 2003.

Major General Sakyi has a bachelor’s honours degree in public administration from Greenhill College at the Ghanaian Institute of Management and Public Administration in Accra, Ghana.  He is also a graduate of the Senior Command and Staff Course, Command and Staff College, Accra; the Army High Command Course, Army Command College, Nanjing, China; and the ECOWAS Senior Mission Leaders Course, National Defence College, Abuja, Nigeria.

Born in Ghana in 1954, he is married and has three children.

* *** *

For information media • not an official record