Series Sixteen, Episode Two – Tech in Ghana: Increasing talent through education and consumer need

Julia: Hello, my name is Julia Streets and welcome to DiverCity Podcast, talking about equity, inclusion, and diversity in financial services. On the podcast, we seek to shine a light on positive progress, call-out areas requiring further focus and offer lots of ideas to help drive change. And before we get started today, I just want to take a moment to thank our friends at City A.M. They’ve given DiverCity Podcast, a new home at Impact A.M. Their pages dedicated to ESG, impact investments, DE&I, and much more. And we really appreciate that they publish and promote both our episodes and our supporting blog series, so their readers can stay right on top of the very latest diversity, equity, and inclusion debate. So, thank you to City A.M. Now, this episode is the second international feature podcast focusing on Tech in Ghana. And I’m delighted to be joined by two guests today, Kingsley Abrokwah and Darryl Koku Mawutor Abraham. Allow me to introduce them to you.

Kingsley Abrokwah is the Chief Enabler and the Chief Executive Officer of KudiGO. He’s an entrepreneur, a tech innovator, and has spent the past 13 years working with top tier professionals across a range of industry verticals, honing his skills in software development, marketing strategy, and brand building. And at the very heart of his work is this passion for creating impact-oriented businesses that ultimately contributes to both the business and the social landscape. He believes in the power of mentorship and strives to build businesses that prioritise institutions over personalities, always with a focus on creating positive change and impact. Kingsley, it’s wonderful to have you on the show. Thanks for being with us.

Kingsley: Thank you Julia. Excited to be on this show.

Julia: Our second guest today is Darryl Koku Mawutor Abraham. He’s the Growth Director in Africa of Taptap Send. An experienced FinTech leader, Mawutor has almost 20 years of experience in creating, building, and scaling businesses in the UK financial services sector. He’s responsible for growing Taptap Send’s business in Africa. It’s a money transfer company that is committed to lowering the cost of remittances and reducing inequality in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. He’s passionate about Ghana and even more passionate about moving capital into Ghana through forming partnerships with local FinTech firms. So, Mawutor, welcome to the show.

Mawutor: Thanks for having me, Julia. It’s an honour.

Julia: Mawutor’s based in London. Kingsley is based in Ghana and I can’t wait to get into this discussion because I am so curious to know what each of you are up to. Kingsley, let me come to you, first of all.

Kingsley: I’m based out of Accra and I’ve been focused on trying to build tech solutions, but for micro and small businesses, the entire intent of helping them gain what we call digital commerce literacy. So, back home here, you have a lot of retail businesses, mum-and-pop shops, who struggle to figure out how to scale their business. And I strongly believe that tech is an enabler. And so, by creating very usable tech tools that can plug into existing FinTech rails, we are able to bring them to the fore of innovation and allow them to expand their business without changing their behaviour. It’s really an African solution for an African market. Targeted are the people who really move the local economy, which is our micro and small businesses.

Julia: Fabulous, incredibly important work and I’ve got so many questions about almost like the makeup of your target markets and then therefore, those who work within the industry, as well. Thank you for being with us. Mawutor, I have same question to you. Tell us what you’re focused on right now.

Mawutor: Right now, I’m focused on moving all the capital in the West into Africa. And I say that with all the intents that it comes with, which is there is a lot of imbalance between the West and Africa. And my job is to help individuals and help small businesses as such move the capital they hold in the West into Africa. That’s my main focus and that’s what I do. I spend most of my time travelling around the African continent and Europe and the US and the UK to help individuals recruiting talent, finding capital, and helping individuals be able to move money into Africa. And that is such a hugely important, hugely passionate bit of work that I do. My immediate focus now is finding talent in Africa and talent in London mainly, who want to work on the African continent or who want to focus their work whilst based in London, on Africa.

It’s a hugely important bit of work and we need all the talent we can find. So, that’s been my major focus, moving capital, finding talent to help us move capital, and finding capital to help us move capital. It’s all about moving capital for me.

Julia: Fascinating. I’m really curious to get into that and obviously, the talent part of that equation is so important. Kingsley, let me come to you, first of all. Paint us a picture. Talk to us about the vibrancy and the innovation of technology development in Ghana right now. We hear great stories about the work that’s happening there and particularly, with some context around the weird and as I described it, wonderful world of FinTech.

Kingsley: Back home in Ghana and Africa as a whole, I strongly have the view that Africa has always leapfrogged tech adoption. For example, when you come here back home, you wouldn’t find a lot of people using bank cards or using bank accounts, but you found money adoption very high. And the reason is that the way we used tech locally is akin to a way of life. You find out that any young man, young woman, any small business owner can afford a simple Android phone for them to be able to do WhatsApp conversations. And so, if you want to build tech into that ecosystem, you need to look at exactly what they have access to and be able to embed that tech into those particular devices that’s enabling them to have application that is needed. So, locally, I always say that look, a lot of our people are very tech-savvy but not how we define tech-savvyness.

Their tech-savvyness is centred around exactly how they can use the tech tools to benefit them, not going on Zoom calls like we are doing now. They actually don’t even know what Zoom calls are, but they know exactly how to move funds on their phone, know how to send WhatsApp videos, know how to send VoiceLoop, and stuff, and that’s how tech is used in Africa. It’s akin to our way of life and it’s designed to empower us to do great things. And so, it’s a great landscape, great adoption, great people, and it’s always marvellous to see how they use the solution that we develop in an entirely different way that we thought we use it for.

Julia: I’m always really fascinated to try and cover these leapfrog stories because there’s incremental change and there’s leapfrog change. And to hear you would talk about not so much from a point of view of the provider but very much through the lens of the user, it’s fascinating to hear the developments are happening. No doubt we’ll get much more into that, as well. And Mawutor, I’d love to come from your point of view. You were talking there about the passion for moving capital and also uncovering talent, as well. Talk to us a bit about the emergence of Tech in Ghana and your views on the talent that’s coming into the industry.

Mawutor: It’s a very good point Kingsley makes about leapfrogging, and it’s a very good point about the emergence of tech and innovation and improvements in Ghana and Africa as a whole. So, I look after Africa, so I have the pleasure of travelling to Nigeria quite a lot, Kenya, quite a lot, Cameroon, quite a lot, Senegal, quite a lot. And in the last five years, I have travelled mainly as a person who was consuming tech in Ghana or who is part of that ecosystem. But for the last three years, I’ve actually worked in the ecosystem and helped to create an ecosystem which is now delivering results. Five years ago, there wasn’t really an ecosystem of tech in Ghana, but that has changed and Kingsley would bear fruit to that. Businesses like KudiGO are businesses that have come up as a result of an ecosystem being created.

This didn’t exist 5-10 years ago. So, I think the buildup of the ecosystem, which includes everybody from regulators to talent to individual companies to telcos to all sorts of people, have helped create an ecosystem which allows a regular everyday person to get up and create a new business and try and do something in the tech world, try and do something in the FinTech world. I think that has seen this massive move of innovation and massive move and massive growth in Tech in Ghana, and I can see it. I think in Ghana, more than most of the African countries I visit, is growing a lot and booming a lot in tech and I can just see it growing and growing and it’s probably going to take a few more years to catch up with where we are in the West. But I’m really, really excited to see how it’s going.

Mostly, it’s been in payments, but there is also innovation in agriculture, innovation in manufacturing, innovation in services, innovation in tourism. And this has all been enabled by ecosystems being created. One, it’s also been enabled by people and talent. When I schooled in Ghana 30 years ago, I didn’t know what tech was, but people are now learning what tech is. People are, throughout their education, understanding what different jobs there could be in tech. Girls are getting interested in tech, kids are getting interested in tech, everybody’s getting interested in tech, which means that things are changing and this is fueling the growth and making tech a bit more accessible, a bit more ready and inviting more people, and growing the tech space. So, I’m excited to see it and as a Ghanaian, I’m super excited to see how Ghana is growing massively in the tech world and booming and it’s going to continue booming, too.

Julia: And for both of you, the passion and pride comes bursting through my zoom lens as we’re recording this. But I wonder if I could just explore this from a couple of angles. One of them is obviously, particularly from a DiverCity point of view and you talk there about ecosystems and you talk there about talent. And we’ll put capital aside for a moment. Kingsley, can I bring you in here? I’d love to get your thoughts about when we start thinking about doing business on a local scale, regional scale, and also global scale, what are your thoughts around talent development? And also, is there a very conscious move towards bringing greater diversity into the talent mix or are we at risk of just finding mostly male-founded, male-run businesses?

Kingsley: Like Mawutor said, five years ago, when you asked this question, I would say yes, there is a big gap. Yes, there’s not inclusion but as of now, a lot of work has been done, deliberate efforts have been made to ensure that, for example, girls getting to tech, women getting to tech, they highly profiled out there because let’s face it, women run our economies. They make sure that these economies move. So, the more we put them at the forefront of innovation, the better we can actually scale up and be where we want to be. Now, in Ghana and Nigeria and across the continent, there is deliberate effort for inclusion across all spheres of the demography, whether you are young, you are old. Whoever you are, once you have the interest, there is a way to learn some tech solution. There is a way to learn programming. Now, in Ghana, Ghana arguably has the brightest pool of very skilled tech talent from programmers to having designers and whatnot. And these are people who without that, probably would’ve ended up in a boring, probably public sector job just whiling the time away.

But now, there is that innovation, there is opportunities to work remotely. So, really I think there’s no better time now to temper the fact that there is real diversity and inclusion when it comes to tech Ghana and on the continent, as well.

Julia: It’s great to hear that move over the last five years and also the focus on the inclusion and of course, it’s not just the gender discussion, it’s also about disability, LGBTQ+, and dynamics around that, as well. I’d love to bring the capital element into this discussion, if I may, Mawutor, and just I imagine, but correct me if I’m wrong, that’s a capital from the diaspora is probably forthcoming. I’m curious to know whether you experience any biases or any sort of proactivity from international investors, not within the diaspora.

Mawutor: There’s brightly biases. As a founder, as a black founder from Ghana or Nigeria, you go to the open market and seek funding. I think it’s okay at the seed capital stage because you can normally get some friends, families, and fools to join you to raise seed capital and then you start your business. But to scale the business, you need what we call serious money, proper money. You need $10 million and then you have to seek funding from the US. You have to seek funding from the West, in general. As a black founder based in Africa, black founder based in Ghana, Nigeria, what do you tend to face is two things. One there is the market and the understanding that investors have of the market we play in. Most of the investors out there don’t understand the African market. They don’t understand what the market could bring.

If I’m told, and I’ve done that before, I’ve told big investment firms in the West that there are 10,000 FinTechs in Nigeria. They’re like, “What?” It blows their mind, they don’t get it. But Nigeria has almost 400 million people. So, the chance that there is 10,000 FinTechs is absolutely believable, but they don’t believe in the markets because they don’t understand the market and because they don’t have enough of an interaction with the market. So, my call to action using your great platform is to say to investors in the US, in wherever they are in the West, come to Africa, visit Africa, understand the market because it’s a market where there are returns to be made. It doesn’t matter that they’re black, it doesn’t matter that they are in Africa, and we stop to see Africa as a scary, dangerous place to invest. No, there are real returns to be made here and I would encourage people to come and see it.

The first bias I’ll talk about is the market by us, where people don’t understand the market that we play in and therefore don’t understand the opportunities that exist in this market and this vast land mass that we have that could generate results.

There is then the individual bias. Individual bias is me, black person. I look black, I feel black. When I turn up to investors who don’t live in Ghana, who don’t live in Africa, their trust of me is very different to their trust of a white co-founder. So, I told my founder friends in Ghana, “Look, if you want to raise capital in the US, get a white co-founder and go and do it.” Is that the right thing to do? Probably not. But does it get results? Yes, it does.

We are still in that place where, as a founder, you get a co-founder who looks different to you and you go and present yourself to an investment firm in the West, you are more likely to get capital in London than if you turned up as two Nigerian boys who say, “Look, we want to take over the Nigerian market, we’ve got this tech, we’ve got this innovative new tech and we want to build it.”

The belief and trust in that individual is very different. And I don’t blame them because people believe in their own. I’m more likely to trust somebody who looks like me, talk like me, and sounds like me than somebody who is not. That individual bias leads investors not to immediately give us big money, trust us and say, “Look, you know what? Come in, let’s hear what you have to say.” 

These two biases still exist. tell my founder friends, go get a co-founder who doesn’t look like you. You might get better results and hopefully, the market will change. Hopefully, the capital market will change and we’ll be in a place where we don’t have to do these things. But practical advice, you need somebody, you need another co-founder to help you raise that funds and those biases exist and we are working with those biases every day and we are hoping that we can get to a point where it doesn’t exist anymore. But right now, that’s the world we live in and we are happy with that and we’ve got to try and find and fight to change that.

Julia: Well, let’s pick up on that point, where I’m curious to know where would you advise investors to go to become better educated? Kingsley, do you have an opinion on this? And then Mawutor, coming back to you.

Kingsley: Thanks Julia, and I think I do have an opinion. I agree with everything Mawutor said because he hit the nail right on the head. I’ve been through it personally because I’m an African founder in Africa, from Africa with no diaspora connection. So, imagine how hard it is to get investment. I think for an investor watching this podcast today, if you are looking to invest in Africa, understand African tech landscape, there are lots of well-noted organisations, who have taken the time to build these connections. For example, you look at Tech in Ghana by AB20, look at Africa Tech Summit, all these are time tested events that have tried to tell the African narrative in the right context. Don’t just go and do a Google search on the first page. No.

Go on LinkedIn, find people who run these organisations, message them. Even if it means paying a premium to get the right information, do that because what you get will be worth your while than just going on Google and just taking to what the first page tells you and taking that as the gospel truth. So, that’s how I would approach understanding how to invest in Africa.

Julia: Mawutor, would you agree with that? Is that the best approach?

Mawutor: I would totally agree. I would say find the key people within the African FinTech space and find the platforms. And we are grateful for set platforms. We are grateful for DiverCity podcasts. Said platforms allow us to project who we are as African founders. We sound different, we look different, we come across different. But look, we do some amazing things in Africa. 

The only way you can find out properly what the real truth is about the market, about the individuals in the space, in the African FinTech space, in the Ghana FinTech space is to attend some conferences. Come and see what we’re doing at Tech in Ghana. Come and see what we’re doing at Ghana Investment Promotion Council and what they’re doing. Look at the FinTechs that they are pushing and promoting because that’s a whole programme of work which is trying to showcase and put forward some great FinTechs, some great work on the international scene.

It’s not Google, it’s not asking your friends in Silicon Valley because they wouldn’t know what’s happening in the ecosystem. What happens normally for a white founder, if you ask a friend, they don’t know about it. It’s like, “Oh, okay, it can’t be that serious.” But no, don’t take your friend’s word for it because you may have 10/11 friends in the capital space or who are all investment bankers or investors, but it’s a very high chance that because they don’t know about it, doesn’t mean it’s not real. There is other people who know about it. There is platforms to find out that there is a way to seek that information. And I think it is these platforms, it is platforms like these. It is reaching out to the tech giants in the world.

There is lots of individuals on LinkedIn, who have been posting about tech and Tech in Africa for a very long time. Talk to them. They’ll point you in the right direction. That is the way to get the right information and to start to get a deeper understanding of the market so you can start to get some returns because this market is up for grabbing for sure.

Julia: I do think it’s really fascinating, particularly in this economic context. Global geopolitical economic context is the opportunities that investors are keen to seek in order to get those returns. Thank you. It’s really helpful to be able to understand where to go. I think that’s important. But I do now want to return to this question and talent because we talk about gender, we talk about race, disability, sexual orientation, particularly on the show, and also social inclusion is really important and I think a lot of that’s come through in the discussion so far. But I want to pick up on this sort of really key question about, Mawutor, in your work, you’ve talked about the importance of bringing your authentic selves to the workplace, but we have to realise that there will be some African partners out there who particularly when we think about sexuality, aren’t perhaps quite as open-minded. Love to get your thoughts on that.

Mawutor: Yes,I say that, we have to play the versions of ourselves which get us results. And I say that with all the respect in the world. I have worked in London and the West most of my life. I’ve fully started working in the African context in the last three years and I’ve had to be Darryl most of my life. I am now free and confident enough and senior enough to be Mawutor. Whilst I was climbing the ladder, I’ve sat in many boardrooms where I couldn’t refer to myself as Mawutor because calling myself Mawutor means people just look at me differently. They like, where you come from, what’s your name? It becomes a subject of conversation, which detracts from the main work we’re doing. That same context applies when I take my colleagues, I take a lot of my colleagues from the West into meetings in Africa, meetings in Ghana, meetings in Nigeria.

And I tell them, “I love the fact that you’re my colleague. I love the fact that you’re gay. I love the fact that you’re lesbian, but let’s not make that the subject of the conversation,” because some of our culture in Africa has not quite caught up with the wealth in the West and we have to be respectful in different contexts. I wouldn’t introduce myself as I am Mawutor, I am gay, I’m machine senior developer. No, I would start with I am Mawutor, I have 10 years in development, and I am solid because that is a context we’re talking about. Now, at lunch, at drinks, at dinner, when they ask a bit more question, are you married? Yes, I’m married. I’ve got two kids adopted. Okay, I’m married to a guy. These are the conditions that we need to teach people to have in Africa. I advise my colleagues, when we are going into African context and we have done that many times, to say, just be careful about how you throw and ram down your own diversity in the throats of Africans who probably are still catching up on that culture front.

And it’s our culture. We have to respect it. We have to be mindful and respectful of cultures and not be ramming down the throats of people what our own diversity is. And I hope that that would not be always the case because that will change. I’ve sat in boardrooms with very male Nigerian people and there’s this one guy with me who was gay and I’ve been worried about him because he’s the kind of guy who would talk a lot about his own sexuality, which I’ve told him many times, doesn’t really matter to the context. Let’s get on with the work and respect the audience who we are with because things could go south very quickly if you start to mention certain things in meetings. And I think we have to be mindful of that whilst we do business in Africa.

Julia: It’s helpful, really helpful to get your insights on that. And you say the context and what are we here to achieve, ultimately. Kingsley, let me bring you in as well if I may, your thoughts on any aspects of diversity, equity, and inclusion you think require further focus within Ghana and within the workplace?

Kingsley: I think a lot of the things Mawutor said are right on point. And I’ve actually had this experience personally when I had a co-founder who was a lesbian, and she found it difficult to come out to me because again, like Mawutor said, in our society, when you are working, you are not focused on talking about sexual preference and stuff like that. But then, once she opened up to me, she realised that I was like, look, if that’s who you are, I’m supporting you a 100%. You are as good as anyone else and you are my co-founder. I’ve got your back every single time. I think what we need to try to focus on is a gradual education and sort of letting people understand how and when and where to have these conversations. I’m sure 10 years from today, we wouldn’t have this conversation anymore because it’ll probably be, like Mawutor said that diversity is now everywhere and stuff like that.

But if you try to put it in every organisation now, for someone like me, I have lots of friends who are gay, who are lesbians, we hang out every time. We have parties, we do all we have to do, and we cool like that. But there are not a lot of people like me and rightly so. It has to be a behavioural change. It won’t happen instantly, but there are efforts to make that conscious effort. Luckily, for us in Ghana, there is no deliberate effort to victimise anyone who is LGBTQ. No, we are acceptable of them. I am acceptable, my friends are acceptable of them. But like Mawutor said, in the right context every time and let’s all help educate people on how to appreciate everyone’s preference, so that together that we can create a community that we all want to live in. So, that’s really my take on that.

Julia: Well, thank you both for your thoughts on that. I can’t help but feel within me that the energy and the vibrancy of this FinTech community, that in of itself is probably underestimated, has a great opportunity to play this leapfrogging or to add a leapfrogging potential to driving change in the LGBTQ discussion and appreciation and value within the industry, as well. Really, fascinating. I think this is a great moment, by the way, to bring in Cynthia Akinsanya for some research to support today’s discussion.

Cynthia: The 2023 World Bank blogs article uses data from the 2021 census to show that the adoption of FinTech has been impressive In Ghana. In 2021, 67% of Ghanaians use some form of FinTech applications, mobile money, and/or internet banking, of which 62% used mobile money and 5.2% used internet banking. Launched in 2009, the uptake of mobile money into the country was initially very slow. In 2012, three years after its introduction into the Ghanaian market, the number of active mobile money accounts in the country stood at only 350,000. By 2020, the number of active mobile money accounts had reached 17.1 million.

Julia: Cynthia, thank you as always for that research and let’s just take a moment to remind everybody how to find DiverCity podcast. Links to the research can be found on our website, divercitypodcast.com. And don’t forget, it’s DiverCity with a C, not with an S, divercitypodcast.com, where you can find all our episodes and sign up for early notifications of future recordings. Do also sign up for our newsletter called DE&I That’s Caught Our Eye, where we share news stories and updates so you can stay on top of what’s current. Of course, you can follow us on social media, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and DiverCity podcast is available on BrightTALK and all good podcast channels. And by the way, we’d love a five star rating. We are very proud of our five star rating because it all helps to promote the show and to carry these voices much, much further.

Gentlemen, thank you very much for all your thoughts before we went into Cynthia’s wonderful research section. I would love to ask you now the question, and I ask all our guests as we close out the show, which is let’s be aware of the economic times, the geopolitical times in which we exist. And I’d love to get your arguments for why the diversity, equity, and inclusion debate must remain top of the priority list. Mawutor, I’m coming to you first.

Mawutor: It must do, I say that because we find ourselves as a black person. I find myself in the minority of this discussion and we are pushing up and making sure that this discussion doesn’t die out until there is some equality in the world, until there is more inclusion in the world, and there’s more diversity in the workplace. I’ve spent 20 years in corporate life and in those 20 years, I have seen diversity increase. But in those 20 years, I’ve also seen diversity being trampled on the ground and people are not caring. So, I would really, really like to see diversity improved, diversity becomes centre stage of what we’re doing in many corporates and in FinTech. I said this for one simple reason, our customer bases have improved and changed and grown. The customer bases as diverse as you can think of, so any company that you are, any corporate that you are, you serving customers from all sorts, all shapes and sizes. Your management and your boardroom must reflect this because I think we can better serve our customers if we understand them more.

If your customers are diverse, you need to be diverse to serve them better. If you’re not, then you’re not going to serve that as best as you possibly can. Have a serious look in your boardroom. If everyone in the boardroom looks like you, you’re not as diverse as you could possibly be and you need to make some changes to that. And this is why I think very seriously that we need to keep this conversation on the agenda and push it as much as we can as individuals and as companies to make sure that the workplace that we work is as diverse as possible. It’ll bring us more returns, can serve our customers better, and we can make as much money as we can in corporate life as we want to do.

Julia: That absolutely aligns with the intention of this podcast from day one, which is this isn’t a nice to have. This is all about commercial ambition. It’s about success and mindful capitalism, if you want to call it that. Kingsley, come on in here, close out the show with your compelling reasons why it absolutely must remain high.

Kingsley: I always view life as a place full of colour, and colour makes everything beautiful. And so, if you’re able to intentionally include diversity and inclusion in everything you do, you open yourself up to so much potential and so many endless possibilities. If you’re not doing that, you’re really giving yourself a big disservice because the more inclusion you have, the more innovation you have, the more grading trends you make and the bigger the market is for you. Personally, I always put myself in situations where I have to learn because that’s the only way you can grow. You need to be intentional in your business, like Mawutor said about diversity and inclusion because it makes everything beautiful and everyone is happy that way. Just live with that. Be happy and embrace everyone because that’s how the world really should be. So, that’s my take on that.

Julia: I couldn’t think of a better way to close the show. I really couldn’t. Kingsley Abrokwah, thank you so much for all your thoughts and for being with us today.

Kingsley: Thanks, Julia. I’m very grateful for the opportunity.

Julia: Thank you. And also to Darryl Koku Mawutor Abraham, Mawutor, thank you for being with us today.

Mawutor: It’s been an absolute pleasure and I think it’s been great. Thank you very much for having us.

Julia: The final word, of course, goes to our listeners. Thank you so much for being with us once again for another episode. If you’d like to get in touch with our two guests today, just go to the website and you’ll be able to contact them. I’m hoping we’ve got some investors listening. I thank you for listening. I’ve been Julia Streets, and until next time. Goodbye.

Cynthia: This episode of DiverCity Podcast was produced by Roshan Roberts on behalf of Julia Street’s Productions. You can find out more about the guests from this week’s show on our website. That’s www.divercitypodcast.com. That’s DiverCity with a C and not an S. Whilst you are there, you can also sign up to our newsletter for all our latest updates. All our episodes are available in Apple Podcast, Spotify, or your favourite podcast app. If you enjoy DiverCity podcast, remember to share on social media and give us a rating or review. And finally, our Twitter handle is @divercitypod. Thanks for listening.