Alexander Adu Clerk was born in
Cape Coast in the
Central Region,
Gold Coast in 1947 to Charles Andrew Clerk (c. 1891 – 1977), a civil servant who had done administrative stints in the northern Nigerian cities of
Kano and
Zaria. His mother was Dorothy Esi Mensima Clerk, née Holdbrook, of Cape Coast and
Ga Mashie. His paternal grandfather, Charles Emmanuel Clerk (died 14 November 1938) worked in the Gold Coast Civil Service as an interpreter and Secretary to the Governor, and earlier, he was a newspaper publisher in Nigeria. Alexander A. Clerk is a fourth generation descendant of the historically important
Clerk family. He is a great-grandson of
Alexander Worthy Clerk, a
Jamaican Moravian missionary who arrived in the
Danish Protectorate of Christiansborg (now the suburb of
Osu) in 1843, as part of the original group of 24
West Indian missionaries who worked under the auspices of the
Basel Evangelical Missionary Society of
Basel, Switzerland. His great-grandaunt was
Regina Hesse (1832 –1898), a pioneer educator and school principal who worked with the Basel Mission on the Gold Coast. Another uncle,
Theodore S. Clerk (1909 – 1965) was the first Ghanaian architect who planned and developed the harbour metropolis,
Tema. A. A. Clerk's aunts were
Jane E. Clerk (1904 – 1999), a woman pioneer in education administration and
Matilda J. Clerk (1916 – 1984), the second
Ghanaian woman to become a physician. His cousin,
Nicholas T. Clerk (1930 – 2012), served as the
Rector of the
Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (
GIMPA), the vice-chairman of the
Public Services Commission of Ghana and the Chairman of the Public Services Commission of Uganda from 1989 to 1990. Another cousin,
George C. Clerk (1931–2019) was a pioneering botanist.
Pauline M. Clerk (1935 - 2013), a diplomat and presidential advisor, was also his cousin. == Education and training ==