I joined PwC Ghana after completing my national service as a teaching and research assistant at the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, University of Ghana.

From 2006, I have provided tax and audit services to local and international clients in various industries principally based in Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia, The Gambia and Zambia. During this period, I obtained membership of and affiliations with various professional bodies and facilitated seminars for various institutions including Universities.

I am a Partner and the Leader of the PwC Business School in Ghana. I lead PwC’s West Africa Indirect Tax team and I am the Vice Dean of the Tax and Fiscal Policy Faculty of the Institute of Chartered Accountants Ghana.

Dr Adwoa B. Yirenkyi-Fianko is currently a Senior Lecturer at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) where she prepares students to be relevant to industry through continuous industry research. Her work has appeared in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings.

Adwoa was awarded a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from University of Western Ontario, Canada; an MSc in Project Management from Sheffield Hallam University, UK and a BSc in Building Technology from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Ghana. She is currently pursuing research on issues related to the environment especially in West Africa.

Mrs. Akua Barnieh Armar is a Senior Assistant Registrar in the Office of the Institute Secretary at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), the premier management training institute in Ghana. Mrs. Armar is a skilled administrator with over 15 years of experience in the management and administration of higher education. Mrs. Armar holds a Master of Philosophy (MPhil) from the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom) and a Bachelor of Arts (First Class) from the University of Ghana, Accra.

Mrs. Armar is a goal-oriented professional with extensive experience managing educational activities and strong customer service skills. She has considerable experience coordinating university-related programs and providing support services. Mrs. Armar is renowned for her passion and capacity to foster positive relationships with all colleagues and managers.

She has exceptional organizational, administrative and multi-tasking capabilities. Mrs. Armar is a confident and proficient public speaker. She is deeply concerned for the welfare of those whom she works with.

Mrs. Armar has participated in numerous programs for professional development in higher education, including leadership, management, and service delivery management, both at home and abroad.

Mrs. Armar's core values are modesty, integrity, honesty, accountability, laced with high moral standards. Her hobbies include cooking, reading, watching movies, and traveling with her family.

Alan Knott-Craig is a successful entrepreneur, author, and founder of Isizwe.com, a company that works to bridge the digital divide in Africa by bringing prepaid fiber to townships.

Originally from Pretoria, he studied at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (formerly UPE) and qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Deloitte in 2002.

In 2003 he founded Cellfind, one of South Africa’s first mobile location based service provider, and served as CEO until 2005. In 2006 he was appointed as CEO of iBurst and built one of South African’s largest wireless broadband networks. In 2010, he founded and became CEO of World of Avatar, an investment house for apps for Africa and was later also CEO of Mxit after acquiring the company in 2011. At the time Mxit was Africa’s biggest social network. In 2014 he founded Hero Telecoms, which became the biggest rural broadband operator in South Africa.

Between 2003 and 2017 he has co-founded and/or funded over 21 companies in the Technology, Media and Telecommunications sector in Africa, including Cellfind, iFind34600, Toodu, The Daily Maverick, Pondering Panda, Inqaku and Namola.

He has published ten books since 2008, including a national bestseller, Don’t Panic, and a global history of telecommunications.

He was named as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2009. He was also included in “100 Choiseul Africa", a list of top 100 young African business leaders in 2014, 2015 and 2016, and nominated as the 2015 ICT Personality of the Year by ITWeb.

He has been nominated by Entrepreneur Magazine as one of the top eleven entrepreneurs changing the African landscape.

He is the author of several viral articles, including Don’t Panic (2008), Reasons for Optimism (2019), and South Africa Might Get Lucky, arguing that the future of South Africa is bright, and Entrepreneurs will save World.

He writes a daily blog for entrepreneurs at www.bigalmanack.com

Baniyelme D. Zoogah (PhD - The Ohio State University) Associate Professor of Management at the DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University, Ontario, Canada HR/OB courses in the Human Resources and Management Area.  In addition to Visiting Professorship positions in Ghana and South Africa, he has published in Journal of Applied Psychology, Academy of Management Learning and Education, Academy of Management Perspectives, Journal of Business Ethics, Human Resources Management, Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Global Strategy Journal, International Journal of Cross-Cultural Management, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, International Journal of Human Resources Management, Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice (IOP) and Africa Journal of African Management. He has authored two books on Strategic followership, one book on Ethnos Oblige: Theory and Evidence and co-authored Managing Organizational Behavior in the African Context, and edited one volume of the Emerald series on Research Methodology in Strategy and Management (in the Context of Africa).

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Barry van Zyl is a world-renowned musician with over 30 years experience in thecreative sector, from performance and production to executive education,strategy and business development. Having toured the world for 21 years withSouth Africa’s most famous export, Johnny Clegg, and while working with artistslike Annie Lennox, Carlos Santana, Peter Gabriel and Die Antwoord, Barrycompleted an MBA at Henley Business School and is now focused on the businessof music, creativity, and culture. Since 2018 Barry has been growing newbusiness for Henley Business School, starting in Nigeria and then in otherareas of west and east Africa, with the aim of ‘building the people, that buildthe businesses that build Africa’. As the Chair of Henley’s pan-African Alumnicommunity, Barry is leveraging Henley’s network of 80,000 alumni to build thebrand in new territories, develop the offer in existing markets, and createinnovative new revenue streams. Barry is partnering with premium organizationslike the Temple Management & Ogidi Studios group, and developing excitingprojects focused on creativity, content production, the future of music andeducation. In addition to this work, Barry embraces his passion for themarriage of the creative sector and executive leadership by designing anddelivering corporate leadership programs in creativity and innovation,entrepreneurship, and the business of rhythm. His clients include major SouthAfrican companies in financial and professional services, energy, travel andeducation. Despite his immense success in the creative industry, Barry’s mostimportant job is being a role model to his teenage daughter.

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Catherine is Dean for International Affairs and Professor of Political Science at Bocconi University. At Bocconi, she is also a Research Associate at the Dondena Centre for Research on Social Dynamics and Public Policy, the CLEAN Unit for the Economic Analysis of Crime of the BAFFI-CAREFIN research center and the Bocconi COVID crisis. Finally, she is an associate member of Nuffield College. Previously, she held professorships at the University of Oxford and Essex as well as visiting posts at University of California at Los Angeles, University of Mannheim, University of Vienna and the European University Institute.

Catherine’s work can be broadly situated in the areas political behaviour, political economy and EU politics. Catherine’s work has appeared in leading political science journals, such as the American Political Science Review, Annual Review of Political Science, and the Journal of Politics. She is currently working on a research project  funded through a Consolidator grant of the European Research Council that examines how economic hardship affects support for socially conservative political agendas [LOSS]. Together with Seth Jolly, Catherine hosts the European Politics Online Workshop, which is a public workshop series for scholars working on European politics from the US and Europe.

Catherine has published several books. Her first book Euroscepticism and the Future of European Integration published with Oxford University Press in 2018 received the European Union Studies Association (EUSA) Best Book in EU Studies Award in 2019 and was listed in the top-5 books on Europe’s future by the Financial Times. The book develops a benchmark theory of public opinion towards European integration and suggests that people’s views about Europe are intrinsically linked to the national benchmarks employed. The praise for the book by Professor Matthew Gabel from the University of Washington at St Louis highlights that “[t]his is a superbly written, wonderfully perceptive, book, which will move the posts in the field of public opinion” and its “findings are sure to provide valuable grist for the mill for politicians, EU officials, and journalist interested in making sense of, addressing, and perhaps even exploiting contemporary public resistance to the EU.”

In 2020, she published her second book Political Entrepreneurs: The Rise of Challenger Parties in Europe, co-authored with Sara B. Hobolt, with Princeton University Press. Drawing analogies with how firms compete, this book demonstrates that political change is as much about the ability of challenger parties to innovate as it is about the inability of dominant parties to respond. Delving into strategies of dominance versus innovation, the book explains why European party systems have remained stable for decades, but also why they are now increasingly under strain. The praise for the book by Professor Pippa Norris from Harvard University highlights that “supported by a formidable body of empirical evidence, Political Entrepreneurs provides fresh theoretical insights into the causes and consequences of this phenomenon. An invaluable contribution to understanding how parties compete in contemporary democracies.”

In 2021, Catherine and her co-authors Sara B. Hobolt, Sven-Oliver Proksch and Jonathan Slapin published a textbook Foundations of European Politics with Oxford University Press. It offers an accessible introduction to European politics using a coherent comparative and analytical framework that can be used to understand both national and EU-level policy-making in Europe. The praise for the textbook by Michael Laver from New York University states that: “Authoritative and informed, yet accessible, this excellent introduction to European politics deftly interweaves theory and data. Designed to make readers think for themselves, this book offers a fine introduction to political science more generally, from respected authors who really know their stuff.”

Currently, Catherine is working on her fourth book, Money Flows: The Political Consequences of Migrant Remittances (under contract at Oxford University Press), with David Doyle, Katerina Tertytchnaya and Hector Solaz. The book highlights the unintended, and even unexpected political consequences of remittance flows. It focuses on how remittances shape the relationship between citizens and their governments, and show that far from being an exclusively international risk-sharing mechanism, remittances can also compromise rudimentary accountability mechanisms in the developing world.

Catherine is a member of European Integration Committee of the Dutch Advisory Council on Foreign Affairs (Adviesraad Internationale Vraagstukken), the Board of Trustees of the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin and sits on the editorial board of Acta Politica, Comparative Political Studies, European Union Politics, the Journal of Politics and Political Science Research and Methods. In 2014, Catherine received the American Political Science Association Emerging Scholar Award for her contribution to the field of elections, public opinion and voting behaviour in 2014 and was selected a Young Global Leader in the World Economic Forum in 2013.

Next to teaching and research, Catherine tries to contribute to public debate through advice and commentary based on her research findings. Together with Isabell Hoffmann of the Bertelsmann Foundation, Catherine co-founded the platform eupinions. eupinions is an independent platform for European public opinion. Through the eupinions platform, quarterly data is collected, analysed and commented to establish how the European public thinks about current political issues. Check out the eupinions website for more information. She has also contributed to general interest magazines like Foreign Affairs or blogs like the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage.

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Desalegn Mekuria Nigusse is the President of Kibur College. For the last 17 years, he has been working as an educator and business leader in the education sector. Currently established and leading an innovative college to bridge the gap by offering quality and skill-based education for young leaders.

He graduated from Jimma University, AAU, Addis Ababa, and Lincoln University, Oakland, CA, with BA in Finance, Media, and MBA, respectively.

Master of Ceremony

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Professor Manu is a Professor at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) and was the Rector from August 2012 to August 2016. He previously served as Dean of the GIMPA Business School. He has over thirty years of experience in consulting, training, and education. During this period, he has exhibited extensive capabilities in strategic planning, programme, design and assessment in higher education. He has been heavily involved in designing and reviewing programmes to improve university and corporate education in such institutions as Loyola College in Maryland (USA), Morgan State University (USA), Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), Association of African Business Schools, Global Business School Network, International Academy of African Business and Development, Ghana National Accreditation Board. Currently, he is the Chairman of the Accreditation Committee of the Association of African Business Schools.

Ihsan Zakri serves as a Regional Head of Middle East and Africa at AACSB International. Ihsan works with both the Executive vice president/Chief Officer Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), and the Chief Accreditation officer to develop and implement integrated accreditation and member service and engagement initiatives in the EMEA region.  Ihsan has been with AACSB since 2016 and he played an important role in engaging schools in the region within AACSB’s Business Education Alliance, and in his role as accreditation liaison, he has supported the success of the 32 accredited schools, as well over 30 schools in the Middle East and Africa currently in the accreditation process. Ihsan has an international background in higher education, program and Institutional accreditation and business and program development. He gained extensive experience in accreditation and EU funded projects before joining AACSB. Ihsan has earned a Master’s degree in Social Sciences with a concentration on the Middle East from Lund University, Sweden, and served as a faculty member at the university of Amsterdam before joining AACSB.

Jon is Dean and Director of Henley Business School in Africa, part of the Henley Business School UK, a leading global business school with campuses in Europe, Asia and Africa. With Henley Africa being the first school to be accredited by The Association of Africa Business schools (AABS), Henley now holds international quadruple accreditation, AABS, AACSB, AMBA and EQUIS. Henley’s purpose is ‘We build the people who build the businesses that build Africa.’

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Jon’s career includes roles as educator, dean, corporate executive, airline pilot, aerobatic competitor, writer and speaker. He has 45 years of international working experience. He has been a professor of innovation, MBA director, director of executive education, designer and director of numerous executive education programmes and lecturer in strategy, innovation and executive learning. His interests are economic and educational transformation, sustainability and business evolution.
Henley Africa has been an entrepreneurial success, with a strong reputation for progressive learning design and care for students and clients.

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Jon is chairman of the British Chamber of Business in Southern Africa, chairman of the Association of Africa Business Schools, board member of the Alliance of Management Development Associations in Rising Economies, and former vice-chair of the South African Business Schools Association. He is chair and founder of MBAid, an NPO that seeks to turn the energies of business schools to social good, which has worked with over 350 NGOs. Jon is also a Distinguished Professor at Woxsen University, India and a life Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, UK.

Dr. Kati Kovacs, is the Director of Global Development at Peregrine Global Services (PGS). Kati is an accomplished executive with 20 years of experience in business education, international development, accreditation, and quality delivery. Her responsibility at PGS lies in developing and managing a global portfolio of partner institutions and services for PGS. Having held senior international management roles, she has a track record of excellence in building up quality assurance systems within institutions; achieving and maintaining international accreditation; acquiring and building new businesses and partnerships while maintaining and improving current ones.

Currently, Kati is based in Maastricht, the Netherlands. Prior to joining Peregrine Global Services, she worked as Dean/ Associate Dean of Global Education Programs at Maastricht School of Management, establishing and managing a wide portfolio of programs across the globe (Europe, China, Middle East, South America, Africa) while spearheading the national and international accreditations of the programs. Recently she also led the Global Partnership team at London Southbank University in the UK. Her voluntary activities included serving as chair on boards of international accrediting bodies and chairing numerous site visits.

Kati is a firm believer in our responsibility to provide quality education to students across the globe and as such makes it her mission to help higher education institutions improve.

Kati holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree (cum laude) in History and Political Science, a Master of Public Administration Degree from Jacksonville State University, USA, and a Doctor of Business Administration Degree in Higher Education Management from the University of Bath, UK. Kati is fluent in English and Hungarian.

Kevin is an experienced investment and financial services professional and holds the Corporate Finance Qualification issued by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales (ICAEW).

Up till the end of 2016, Kevin enjoyed a rich career in corporate law, banking, private equity, M&A and capital markets working for large firms and corporations such as BLR Robert, Apex Group and Mauritius Commercial Bank group.

He adopted the entrepreneurship route in late 2017 and has since been the CEO of Cartwheel Investments a privately held investment firm that deploys buyout and growth capital to SMEs in Mauritius in sectors such as financial services, property, healthcare, food security and education.

Amongst the portfolio of Cartwheel is the Centre for Legal & Business Studies (CLBS). CLBS has been operational since 2005 and is the first Mauritian establishment to be part of the Association of African Business Schools. CLBS runs several legal academic courses in partnership with worldclass UK Universities. CLBS also runs trainings and seminars in executive education mainly geared towards the financial services sector in Mauritius. Some of the CLBS partners include University of London, University of Law, Alliance Manchester Business School, Comsure Group, Proptech Africa and Fitch Learning.

Director, Centre for Dynamic Markets, Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS)

Nacho Zabaleta CFA is the Executive Director at the Canary Islands Business School, where he has worked as a Finance Professor for the past 20 years.

Nacho Zabaleta is a Chartered Financial Analyst, Holds a Bachelors of Business

Administration from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and Mba in international banking from Texas A&M International University as well as a Masters of Science in Finance from Montpellier Business School.

A true believer that education is key to improve the world, he has he has over 15 years experience in the field of financial inclusion as a consultant as well as a researcher in Africa, Asia, and the Islands of the Pacific.

Author of the book Las Sin Banco (the bankless) on the subject of microfinance, he also hosts the radio finance literacy program “hablar por hablar” , at SER radio, the main Radio Station by users in Spain

Languages: English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and basic level Arabic

Patrick Awuah is the Founder and President of Ashesi University, a private, not-for-profit institution that has quickly gained a reputation for innovation and quality education in Ghana. In 2012, Ashesi University was ranked as one of the top ten Most Respected Companies in Ghana and was the first educational institution to win the award. In the same survey, Patrick Awuah was named the 4th Most Respected CEO in Ghana.

Before founding Ashesi University, Patrick worked as a Program Manager for Microsoft where, among other things, he spearheaded the development of dial-up internet working technologies and gained a reputation for bringing difficult projects to completion.

He holds bachelor’s degrees in Engineering and Economics from Swarthmore College; an MBA from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business; and four honorary doctorates.

He has won many prestigious international awards including the MacArthur Fellowship; the McNulty Prize; Membership of the Order of the Volta -- one of Ghana’s highest awards, given to individuals who exemplify the ideal of service to the country; Chevalier dan's l'Ordre des palmes academiques du Niger; and the World Innovation Summit for Education Prize. In 2015, Patrick was named one of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders by Fortune, and received the Elise and Walter A. Haas International Award, given to UC Berkeley alumni with distinguished records of service to their countries.

Ralph is professor at the UCT Graduate School of Business. He works on business sustainability and social innovation and entrepreneurship and his papers address topics such as environmental strategy of wine firms, corporate responsibility and irresponsibility in mining, and social innovation through cross-sector collaboration. Previously, he was Research Director at the UCT Graduate School of Business, and Research Chair at the African Climate and Development Institute. Among his other roles, he is the co-founder of the South African leg of the Embedding Project and the Southern Africa Food Lab, two award-winning initiatives bridging research and practice. He is an executive editor of Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, and a member of the editorial board of Strategic Organization. Ralph has been a visiting scholar or consultant in different parts of the world, most recently as Pearson Visiting Professor of Engineering and Entrepreneurship at Brown University.

Sandrine B. Tshishimbi is the Accreditation Manager since September 2022 after joining AABS in June 2021 as the Accreditation Officer. Previously, she worked in the office of the DRC Ambassador and Dean of the Diplomatic Corps as the Personal Assistant. She was called to provide administrative support to the Ambassador and the entire Diplomatic corps.

She has also worked as an Interpreter at the Refugee Centre, South African Department of Home Affairs. She studied at the University of South Africa where she obtained a Bachelor of Commerce in Banking and Postgraduate in Risk Management.

Xavier Rajot is the Director of International Academic Partnerships and a board member at Montpellier Business School (MBS) in Montpellier, France and Dakar, Senegal, which offers education programs in Europe and Africa. He actively engages with academic leaders across the world to represent MBS globally.

Having worked in Portugal and France, Xavier has been responsible for international relations in higher education for the past decade. He has designed and implemented successful internationalization strategies, coordinated an alliance of business schools across Europe, Africa, Asia and Oceania, established strategic double degree partnerships with renowned institutions worldwide and launched summer schools.

Prior to working in higher education, Xavier has held multiple marketing and communication management positions in the corporate world. Xavier is an MBA graduate from Neoma Business School, and is currently pursuing a DBA.

Xavier is passionate about global education and has lived and worked in seven different countries, speaking five languages fluently.

Yasmine SY SARR is currently the Strategic Development and Quality Assurance Director of Groupe Supdeco Dakar, (West Africa) and Academic Director, one the first business school in West Africa, since 2009. She has been part of the development and growth of the institution serving as the Head of International Relations and quality for 7 years, where she developed their international network on four continents (Europe, America, Asia and Africa) an Accreditations.

Yasmine SY SARR holds a master’s degree in international business and Finance from Rennes School of Business in France and a Master of Arts in International Business from the Open University Business School in London (UK). She is currently a Phd candidate in Management. She began her career as a financial auditor in KPMG in Senegal.

For over twelve years, she has been very active on promoting quality assurance and internationalization in higher education in Africa. She is regularly invited in various places in the world to share her experience in quality assurance and internationalization in higher education.  

Alongside her work, she was in charge of the sponsorship commission of the Senegalese Tennis Federation for 10 years. She is also very active in humanitarian and women empowerment associations.