Theodore S. Clerk

Theodore Shealtiel Clerk, ARIBA, AMTPI, PGIA (4 September 1909 – 15 November 1965) was an urban planner on the Gold Coast and the first formally trained, professionally certified Ghanaian architect. Attaining a few historic firsts in his lifetime, Theodore Clerk became the chief architect, city planner, designer and developer of Tema which is the metropolis of the Tema Harbour, the largest port in Ghana. The first chief executive officer (CEO) of the Ghanaian parastatal, the Tema Development Corporation as well as a presidential advisor to Ghana's first head of state, Kwame Nkrumah, T. S. Clerk was a founding member and the first president of the first post-independent, wholly indigenous and self-governing Ghanaian professional body, the Ghana Institute of Architects (GIA), that had its early beginnings in 1963. He was also an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Royal Town Planning Institute.