“For us, it is a game of diversification”- A chat with GVCA’s Amma Gyampo on capital funding in Ghana

A few weeks ago, the Ghana Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (GVCA) appointed Amma Gyampo as its new Chief Executive Officer. Gyampo succeeds Hannah Acquah, whose tenure saw GVCA membership grow by 150%, expand its activities and establish a strong operational framework.

The appointment marks a transformative step in the private sector-led association’s mission to accelerate the growth and impact of the private capital sector in Ghana.

A seasoned strategist and market builder, Amma Gyampo has two decades of global management consulting experience in impact investing, innovative finance, philanthropy, eGovernment and private sector development. 

She is a founding member of Impact Investing Ghana and ScaleUp Africa and has consulted with global brands such as Vodafone, BlackBerry, Mastercard Foundation, YouthConnekt Africa Hub and Fund, GIZ and the European Union. 

She has spearheaded various initiatives in recent years, mobilizing funding and support benefiting over 10,000 women, youth, and startup ecosystem stakeholders across Africa and the Diaspora.

As a follow-up to the announcement, I spoke with Amma Gyampo about her over a decade of experience working in the ecosystem, her priorities, her intentions to foster collaborative relationships across diverse sectors, and her thoughts on the future of private equity investment in Africa.

GVCA  appointment: Amma Gyampo’s perspectives  and priorities

Amma Gyampo believes that her appointment is a culmination of over a decade of working in the ecosystem to pool resources from areas of average yield, unlock trapped capital and channel resources to areas of high yield.

“It is a culmination of a lot of relationships across the industry and ecosystem, with various levels of engagements over the years to talk about SME funding and how we tackle the issue of expensive debt in the region,” she explained.

Amma is an experienced ecosystem builder with a unique understanding of how to build consensus and pathways to collaborative industry action. For her, this stems from a place of passion: “I have been very passionate about this for over a decade now and I have worked in various segments of the ecosystem to understand how we can make our new goals a reality.”

According to GVCA, Amma’s leadership marks the beginning of a bold new phase for the association, as it continues to shape Ghana’s private capital ecosystem for job creation and SME growth. In her new role, she will drive conversations around policy changes and investment structures to yield maximum impact. 

“I think this is a great moment for Ghana’s ecosystem in terms of venture and private equity, but I think more broadly, we are collaborating with other players across the Africa ecosystem as well as the Africa Venture Capital Association and others across the region”, she adds.

Thoughts on the funding landscape in Ghana

A key objective for the Ghana Venture Capital Association and Private Equity Association is to foster collaboration- to connect all stakeholders in the ecosystem to mobilize fixed pools of capital to invest in a variety of companies, often across many industries.

These include fund managers, investment managers, local partners, policymakers, regulators, transaction advisors, law firms and investment advisers. 

Amma acknowledges that regulation is a notable barrier. Some players in the investment space have some regulatory ceilings in terms of what they are allowed to invest in and how. Hence, they can only actively participate as much as they are allowed to by regulation and law.

“Our goal is to build the capacity of our fund managers so that we can maximise funds in a way that is fit for our current context and unlock some local capital for SME growth and job creation”, she noted.

For GVCA, it’s a game of diversification.

“What we are saying to institutional investors, like pension funds is that it’s always a good investment strategy to diversify. So, how do we encourage diversification and understanding of venture capital equity among this institutional investor audience? And, for the regulators and policymakers, how do we implement laws that make it easier for us to benefit from the local market and reduce risk”, she adds.

About a month ago, Ghana welcomed a new President, Mr John Mahama, who was elected to lead the country for the second time. Mahama’s reelection indicates a desire to emerge from the economic turmoil that followed the country’s 2022 debt default.

For Amma Gyampo, now is the time to engage with policymakers deeply to understand the opportunities, challenges and barriers in the ecosystem to eliminate policy bottlenecks as much as possible.

“For now, we need to wait for the government to settle in. But our priority, going forward, is to reduce policy barriers in our way, in terms of the regulation and legal frameworks that we need to harmonize”, she explained.

Funding figures from 2016 to 2014 show that the Ghanaian tech ecosystem achieved a funding peak in 2022 with a total of $202 million raised. Amma attributes the slush to a lot of pent-up demand capital that followed the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I think that 2022 was when we saw some of the pent-up demand capital come out into the market. That explains why we had that boost”, she explained. However, this has come at a great cost: “Obviously, we have had foreign exchange challenges and it affected our local market”.

“So even more important for us to protect ourselves from the vulnerabilities of being exposed to some of these external shocks, and raise more local capital, through institutional local investors”, she concluded.