Speaker Biography
Yofi Grant
CEO, Ghana Investment Promotion Center
Yofi Grant is currently the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre appointed by H.E President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in February 2017. Mr. Grant is also a renowned Ghanaian investment banker with over 30 years of extensive work experience in banking and finance. Having served in various capacities in corporate finance and advisory, corporate banking and marketing, Mr. Grant has broad knowledge and great exposure in the African financial markets and has cultivated strong relationships with international private equity funds, portfolio and investment managers and brokerage funds. He was responsible for the development and implementation of AAF SME Fund LLC, one of the largest agriculture SME funds in Sub-Sahara Africa and helped achieve their first close of US$30million.
Yofi was in 2019 elected to the Steering Board of the World Association of Investment Promotion Associations (WAIPA) to represent Sub Saharan Africa. He is a council member of the Continental Business Network of the African Union which advises African governments on private sector finance and infrastructure. He has served in many directorship roles in both public and private sector. As a partner in the Databank Group, he had supervisory roles as Executive Director, leading the following subsidiaries of the Databank Group, Databank Agrifund Manager Limited, Databank Financial Services Limited, Databank Private Equity Limited and Databank Brokerage Services Limited. In 2009, he served as the Executive Director for Business Development for the entire Databank Group. Prior to joining the Databank Group, Yofi had a very successful and illustrious career at Cal Bank Ltd where he rose to head the Capital Markets and Stock brokerage division. Yofi also served as a consultant on finance and business for the Africa Asia Business Forum (AABF) organized by the UNDP which run workshops in 12 African countries and six Asian countries in 2002. Additionally, he has been in senior advisory roles and led many of the groundbreaking transactions in the Ghanaian and other African capital markets
He is partner and co-founder to a number of companies including Grant Dupuis Investment Limited, a real estate investment advisory firm and Coldwell Banker Ghana a company which held the master franchise license for Coldwell Banker (of the Realogy Group in New Jersey, USA, the world’s largest real estate organization) for Ghana and Nigeria. In addition to this, he recently co-founded Praxis Fortune Calibre, a firm that offers general business advise, and consulting services across the continent.
He has held several supervisory board memberships in private sector as well as GSE listed companies in the telecommunications, commodities, and education sectors and has also played many policy advisory roles for government, particularly in private sector development. He was chairman of Ghana Telecom (One Touch), the Listing Committee of the Ghana Stock Exchange, and Venture Capital Association of Africa amongst other prestigious organizations.
Mr. Grant was also Special Advisor to the Minister for Private Sector Development between 2002 and 2007 where he advised and assisted the Minister with policy formulation and implementation and also on financing for private sector development projects. He currently serves on the Advisory Boards of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, The Ghana Export Promotion Agency (GEPA) and a member of the Ministerial Private Public Partnership Approval Committee of Ghana and a member of the Board of Trustees of the ACP Endowment and Trust Fund.
As the CEO of the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre under the Office of the President, it is Yofi’s singular vision to make Ghana the ‘Best place to invest and do business in Africa’. He lives by the guiding principles of honesty, integrity and a constant search for solutions, and is a Fellow of the Aspen Global Leadership Network’s African Leadership Initiative, West Africa. He is divorced and is blessed with triplets.
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