Eric Kwamina Otoo was born on the 26th of July 1926 in Koforidua, the Eastern Region of the Gold Coast to Joseph Benjamin Kobina Asuantsi Otoo and Elizabeth Adjua Kakraba Otoo.  He started elementary school at the Oguaa School which was later known as Jubilee School.  He was a staunch Catholic but sat for and passed the entrance examination for a Methodist Boys School – Mfantsipim and received a scholarship. He later pursued and obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from the University of Ghana.  In 1956 he met and married Mary Phillipa Ewuraba Brookman Amissah whilst working as a teacher at Mfantsipim School, Cape Coast.  He then joined the Ghana Foreign Service in 1959 as Charge d’Affaires in the Ghana Embassy in Monrovia, Liberia.  He was made the secretary of the Congo Coordination Committee at the Office of the President during the Congo crisis in the early part of 1960. He was also part of a delegation sent to Russia by the president at the time, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah to the Soviet Union, now Russia.  In 1963, he was moved to the Ministry of Defence as a Principal Secretary and was in this office until the overthrow of Nkrumah in 1966.  With the National Liberation Council military government in power, Otoo was appointed secretary to the President with oversight on security.  He represented the country at conferences and from May 1966 to 1970 headed the Economic, Information and Cultural department under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  He doubled as the head of the Political Department of the Foreign Affairs Ministry.

In 1970, he was appointed as Ghana’s high commissioner to Kenya and the Kingdom of Lesotho as well as high commissioner designate to Zambia.  In 1972 he was appointed to Germany as Ambassador and served in this role for two years.  He returned to Ghana in 1974 as was assigned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a Senior Principal Secretary.  He was the head of the Ministry until his retirement.  Post retirement Otoo served on several boards including that of the United Nations and the Organisation of African Unity.  He was also Chair of the board of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation.   In 1982, he was asked to come out of retirement to serve as Ghana’s ambassador to the United States of America with accreditations to Belize, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Mexico and the Virgin Islands.  He finally retired from this position in October 1990.

Pictures obtained from the Otoo family.