Darko Opoku

  • Associate Professor of Africana Studies

Areas of Study

Education

  • PhD, political studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 2005
  • MA, political science, University of Toronto, 1997
  • BA (with Honors and High Distinction), political science and development studies, University of Toronto, 1996

Biography

Darko Opoku teaches the course African Politics. His research interests include political economic development in Africa, IMF and World Bank-inspired neoliberal economic reforms in Africa, and state-business relations in Africa.

Opoku has published in Development and Change, Africa Today, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, and Commonwealth and Comparative Politics.

He is also author of The Politics of Government-Business Relations in Ghana, 1982-2008 (Palgrave Macmillan 2010).

Fall 2024

Introduction to African Studies: Patterns, Issues and Controversies — AAST 132
Government and Politics of Africa — AAST 235

Spring 2025

Traditional African Cosmology and Religions: Shifting Contours and Contested Terrains — AAST 131
Politics and Society in Africa since the 1980s — AAST 236

Notes

Darko Opoku, Eve Sandberg Edit and Author

November 29, 2017

Associate Professor of Africana Studies Darko Opoku and Professor of Politics Eve Sandberg edited the book, Challenges to African Entrepreneurship in the 21st Century (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2018). Both Opoku and Sandberg each contributed two individually authored chapters.

This book asks—why have black African businesses been so difficult to establish and sustain? The authors argue that African states’ domestic political networks, not their markets, are the primary variables that determine the success of African  businesses. Additionally, in order for their enterprises to survive, African business actors have had to devise creative coping strategies. The book explores the challenges and coping strategies of aspiring African entrepreneurs. 

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