Ernest Owusu-Dapaa was born at Kuntanase in the Ashanti region of the Republic of Ghana on 15 December 1976. He obtained his Bachelor of Laws degree (LLB (honours) from the University of Ghana and proceeded to Ghana School of Law to pursue two years of professional legal education which earned him a barrister at law qualification (BL). This paved the way for him to be called to the Ghana Bar in 2003 as a Barrister, Solicitor and Advocate of the Supreme Court of Ghana. He subsequently obtained an LLM degree from the University of Manchester, UK in 2004 and PhD from Lancaster University, UK in 2016.
He was appointed a lecturer in law at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi (Ghana) in 2004 and has been promoted to the rank of Senior Lecturer since 2016. He has also been practising law on part time basis with Owusu-Dapaa Law & Associates, a firm he assisted in establishing in 2006. He is a member of the World Association of Medical Law and the Society of Legal Scholars.