Bridge Builders: The ecosystem architects including policymakers, hub managers, and community leaders who construct the necessary infrastructure, networks, and regulatory environments that allow startups to thrive.
Amma Lartey, CEO, Impact Investing Ghana
Amma Lartey has cemented her status as the formidable architect of Ghana’s investment ecosystem with an ambitious mandate to catalyze one billion dollars in funding for West African ventures. As CEO of Impact Investing Ghana (IIGH), she operates with a strategic three-pronged approach that aligns investors, enterprise support organizations, and SMEs into a cohesive market. Her defining work in 2025 centered on unlocking domestic pension funds, a historically risk-averse capital pool. Through the Pensions Industry Collaborative, IIGH moved beyond advocacy to direct engagement with regulators and asset managers. The organization organized a series of technical training workshops for pension trustees to bridge the knowledge gap.
As of August 2025, its investment facilitation platform, Deal Source Africa had facilitated the eight deals totalling $2,091,005, with at least another $8 million in the pipeline. Deal Source Africa hosted 18 deal rooms, engaging 72 impact funds and connecting them with 372 businesses – of which 80 are female-led – from across the continent.
Nana Yaa Afriyie Ofori-Koree, Head of Partnerships, Sustainability, and CSR, Fidelity Bank
Nana Yaa Afriyie Ofori-Koree has been a driving force behind the bank’s strong commitment to youth-led businesses. Under her leadership, Fidelity Bank has gone beyond conventional commercial banking by not only managing donor-funded programmes such as the Orange Corners Innovation Fund and initiatives supported by the Mastercard Foundation, but also by deploying its own capital to support young entrepreneurs. A flagship example is the Fidelity Young Entrepreneurs Fund, which provides loans to youth-led SMEs at a below-market interest rate of 10%, easing access to affordable finance.
Her work has also shaped Fidelity Bank’s innovation-led approach to sustainability and inclusive growth. The GreenTech Innovation Challenge combines capacity building with direct funding for climate-focused businesses, investing up to GHS 1.4 million in grants in its most recent edition. Building on the success of this programme, Fidelity Bank introduced the Fidelity Cultural and Creative Fund, a pioneering initiative designed to unlock growth in Ghana’s creative economy, through which more than GHS 500,000 has been invested in incubated creative businesses. Together, these initiatives reinforce Fidelity Bank’s position as a leading commercial bank driving impact-focused finance, green innovation, and youth entrepreneurship in Ghana.
Eric Annan, Co-founder & CEO, AyaHQ
Eric Anan is an “OG” in Ghana’s blockchain and Web3 ecosystem and one of the most consistent builders shaping the sector across Africa. While global enthusiasm for Web3 has cooled, he has remained focused on the long-term fundamentals, particularly the development of talent that underpins a sustainable blockchain industry in Ghana and beyond.
After facing challenges scaling Ayagig, the Techstars-backed Web3 talent placement platform, Eric and his co-founders repositioned AyaHQ into a collective incubator model. AyaHQ now delivers structured training, startup incubation, and founder residency programmes in Ghana and Kenya, supporting early-stage Web3 companies with practical skills, mentorship, and ecosystem access.
In 2025, AyaHQ partnered with blockchain platform Lisk to run the third cohort of its incubation programme, selecting 18 high-potential startups. Founders in the cohort received tailored mentorship, technical support, and access to investment opportunities of up to 500,000 dollars.
To deepen its impact, AyaHQ is in discussions to raise 10 million dollars from investors. The proposed funding includes a 5 million dollar microfund for incubated startups and the development of an economic zone in Accra as a founder campus.
John Scicchitano, Managing Director, Pangea Global Ventures
John Scicchitano has established himself as the definitive dealmaker in Ghana’s agribusiness sector. As Managing Director of Pangea Global Ventures, he bridges the critical gap between global capital and local African enterprises. When a significant agribusiness deal is announced in Accra, there is a high probability that Pangea acted as the transaction advisor. The firm’s publicly disclosed deals include
a. Oyster Agribusiness $2 million
b. Mariseth Farms’s $1 million working capital
c. Rujo Agri-Trade’s growth funding from RDF Ghana
Pangea Global Ventures distinguishes itself through deep ecosystem integration rather than traditional advisory work. The firm partners with institutions such as World Vision, the Association of Ghana Industries, and the Ghana Investment Support Programme to identify scalable agribusinesses and prepare them for investment. By combining rigorous technical support with investor readiness services, Pangea has built a vetted agribusiness investment pipeline valued at over $30 million.
Yao Selorm Kuatsinu, Consultant, African Technical Apprenticeship Network
Ghana’s startup ecosystem faces a persistent talent gap. Small and medium-sized enterprises often cannot afford the cost of hiring, onboarding, and training fresh graduates, while a growing pool of qualified young people remains unemployed due to a lack of professional experience. This mismatch slows the growth of startups, limits productivity, and weakens the transition from education to employment.
The African Technical Apprenticeship Network (ATAN) directly addresses this challenge by providing salary top ups for fresh graduates placed with SMEs. Through a structured apprenticeship model, graduates gain hands-on, workplace-relevant experience while startups benefit from motivated entry-level talent without carrying the financial burden of first-year wages. Employers are able to focus on mentorship and skills development, rather than short-term cost constraints, and apprentices build practical capabilities that improve their long-term employability.
Benjamin Gyan-Kesse, Executive Director, Kosmos Innovation Center
In 2025, Benjamin Gyan-Kesse fundamentally restructured the pathway for agricultural entrepreneurship in Ghana, moving the Kosmos Innovation Center (KIC) from an incubator of ideas to an engine of industrialization. His defining move this year was the operational decentralization of innovation, best exemplified by the commissioning of the KIC Center of Excellence at Akyawkrom in Ejisu. Unlike generic hubs, this facility was built with six specialized laboratories—including mechatronics and food innovation labs—to ensure that startups outside Accra have the physical infrastructure to prototype hardware, not just write code. This strategic pivot ensures that the Ashanti Region becomes a self-sustaining node of agri-tech innovation, reducing the ecosystem’s over-reliance on the capital.
Elisabeth Morzadec – Project Coordinator, AI4SD (French Embassy)
Elisabeth Morzadec has been the architect of a trans-continental bridge, effectively merging the research capabilities of France and Ghana to solve hyper-local problems. Spearheading a partnership funded by the French Embassy, she operationalized a high-level collaboration between Université Paris-Saclay, the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, and the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission. This initiative has translated research into deployable solutions across critical sectors.
The partnership has delivered practical innovations in agriculture and the environment, including the Siwa App for weather forecasting in Twi, smart irrigation systems to improve water efficiency, and an AI-powered filtration system to purify water in galamsey-affected mining areas. In health technology, it produced Sign Talk, which translates Ghanaian Sign Language for medical consultations, and Zebra Chat, an AI chatbot providing information on rare diseases in Ghana. To strengthen the future STEM pipeline, the programme established robotics clubs in 24 schools, organised national competitions, and launched SheCodes to train women in Python. It also supported SME growth through hands-on digital skills programmes that enabled businesses to adopt technology and scale.
