Photo of Boris Kodjoe’s Ghanaian family you never saw

Boris Kodjoe Women Empowering Women Symposium Event held at Aqua Lounge Beverly Hills, California - 28.09.10 Mandatory Credit: Apega/

Hollywood actor, Boris Kodjoe is widely known to have a Ghanaian background, but the public don’t really know where the connection came from.

The mention of the name Boris Kodjoe, clearly pulls a cord in the ears of anyone who is familiar with Ghanaian names or is a Ghanaian, as the surname ‘Kodjoe’ is a typical Ghanaian local name. The actor on the other hand has strongly made public his German-Ghanaian background and he is a proud one too.

Boris Kodjoe’s Chief of Police Joseph Cecil Ofuatey-Kodjoe and Elsie Ofuatey-Kodjoe, and behind them standing from left to right, his father Eric, uncle and aunt

Boris Kodjoe was born in Vienna, Austria, the son of Ursula, a German psychologist of partially Jewish descent, and Eric Kodjoe, a Ghanaian physician who is of the Nzema people. Kodjoe’s matrilineal great-grandmother was Jewish and died in the Holocaust; his maternal grandmother survived the war in hiding. Kodjoe’s parents divorced when he was six years old. He grew up in the vicinity of Freiburg im Breisgau. Kodjoe is fluent in German, English, and French, and speaks some Spanish. He has a brother named Patrick and two sisters named Nadja and Lara. His Ghanaian grandparents were Chief of Police Joseph Cecil Ofuatey-Kodjoe and Elsie Ofuatey-Kodjoe.