Irene Appiah
Speaker / Member of the Hamburg Parliament (SPD)
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Irene Appiah is a Member of the Hamburg Parliament (Mitglied der Hamburgischen Bürgerschaft) for the Social Democratic Party (SPD), where she took her seat on 26 March 2025. Born in Hamburg in 1976 to parents who had emigrated from Ghana, she grew up in the Billstedt district, studied law at the Free University of Berlin and the University of Hamburg, and has worked in Hamburg’s education authority (Behörde für Schule und Berufsbildung), with a focus on intercultural education. In the Bürgerschaft she serves as her faction’s spokeswoman for anti-discrimination and equality and for churches and religious communities, and sits on committees including Equality and Anti-Discrimination and Schools.
Appiah has been active in the SPD since 2012 and joined the party’s Hamburg state executive board in 2021. From 2019 to 2024 she was a district representative in the Hamburg-Mitte assembly, where she was noted as the first representative of African heritage to hold that role. Her political priorities centre on education and pathways into employment, economic ties between Hamburg and the Global South, and the fight against discrimination and racism.
Beyond her mandate, Appiah is active in anti-racism and African-diaspora work in Hamburg: she helped found a working group addressing anti-Black racism in the city around 2020 and co-founded the diaspora welfare association “Meine Diaspora e.V.”