Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford, MBE (29 September 1866 – 11 August 1930), also known as Ekra-Agyeman, was a prominent Fante Gold Coast journalist, editor, author, lawyer, educator, and politician who supported pan-African nationalism.

[1] His father, Joseph de Graft Hayford (1840–1919), was educated and ordained as a minister in the Methodist church, and was a prominent figure in Ghanaian politics.

Casely Hayford attended Wesley Boys' High School (now known as Mfantsipim) in Cape Coast, and Fourah Bay College in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

That year, he returned with his second wife Adelaide to Ghana to private law practice in Cape Coast, Axim, Sekondi and Accra.

In 1910, he succeeded John Mensah Sarbah as president of the Aborigines' Rights Protection Society, the first anti-colonial organisation founded in the Gold Coast.

[7] While visiting London to protest the Forest Ordinance of 1911, he was part of a group that gave financial assistance to Dusé Mohamed Ali to get his African Times and Orient Review off the ground.

As a legislator, he served on various public commissions, and was appointed an MBE in the 1919 Birthday Honours for services in aid of the Prince of Wales's Patriotic Fund.

The couple's son Archie Casely-Hayford became a barrister, district magistrate and the first Minister of Agriculture and Natural Resources in the First Republic of Ghana.

[13] While in London studying at the Inner Temple and lodging at a hostel for African bachelors in 1893, Casely Hayford met Adelaide Smith, a lady of Sierra Leonean Creole origins.

[14] Adelaide and Joseph had a daughter, Gladys May Casely-Hayford (1904–1950), who was a teacher, an artist and a poet, publishing some of her poems under the pen name of Aquah Laluah.