Mrs. Kosi Yankey- Ayeh is the Chief Executive Director of the Ghana Enterprise Agency (GEA), previously known as the National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI). She is also the CEO of Nuba Foods and Commodities Ltd (NFCL) and was adjudged the Best Female CEO of the year 2021 at the Made in Ghana Awards (MIGA).
Mrs. Kosi is the first female to head the Ghana Enterprises Agency (GEA) as Executive Director. GEA is an agency under the Ministry of Trade and Industry in Ghana mandated to strengthen and grow Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs). Her leadership has helped in giving NBSSI a firm footing in MSMEs development and promotion. She also serves as an Advisor on the Ministry of Finance’s Advisory Committee and is a Board Member of the Accra Digital Centre, as well as a tech member for various economic committees. Her rich experience in micro-finance and finance has helped scale up the activities of the board.
Prior to her current role, Mrs. Kosi has gurned over 17 years of experience in the USA, Europe, and West Africa where she developed a deep understanding and knowledge of finance, Entrepreneurship, SME Development, and Policy Development. She has also worked for UBS, Merill Lynch, Citigroup, Solidaridad, engineers without borders in the USA, UK and Ghana etc. During the era of privatizations, Kosi Yankey undertook a study and wrote a pitch for governments on how to privatize State-Owned Enterprise (SOEs) whilst interning on the Africa Desk at UBS London.
Mrs. Kosi Yankey received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Government from Wesleyan University, Connecticut, USA from 2002-2004. She began her career as an Investment Banker at Deutsche Bank on Wall Street, in New York where she assisted in establishing the first multi-million dollar microfinance fund set up by an investment bank in 2002. In 2010 she obtained a certificate in Market Access for Sustainable Development from Wageningen University, Netherlands and also holds a certificate from a two-year program on acceleration and entrepreneurship from Massachusetts Institute of Tech.
Kosi Yankey-Ayeh graduated from Harvard University, USA, with a Master’s in Public Administration and Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government where she received the 2016 excellence award for academic distinction and distinguished contribution to the Edward S. Mason Program.
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Over the years, Kosi has founded and led the strategic development and growth of various projects for both international and local partners, some of which have gone global. In the past seven years, she has raised and managed over US$300million and developed different entrepreneurial programs to support entrepreneurs, job creation, and their Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in Ghana.
Her consultancy Agribusiness incubator was the only woman-run and one to make it as one of the top three facilitators to raise millions of dollars in funding to support USAID’s Financing Ghanaian Agricultural Project. Kosi has developed international incubators and accelerators to provide support, implement research and grow MSMEs and entrepreneurs specifically in Africa to scale up and make their businesses investor-ready. In 2014, the incubator she set up was listed amongst the top ten to watch in Africa by Ventures Africa.
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Among other things, Kosi is known as a strong women advocate, and according to her although women entrepreneurship is encouraged in Ghana most women still come against serious limitations when they intend to expand their business. This became obvious as she continuously interacted with some women farmers. In an interview Kosi once stated that “interactions brought to the fore that the major predicament of our clientele, the farmers and traders, was not capital – which is what I had focused on for years – but the lack of access to bigger markets, inadequate storage facilities and poor packaging, among others.” This discovery inspired Kosi to found Nuba foods company Ltd to address these fundamental issues. Nuba Foods and Commodities Ltd (NFCL) is a specialty food processing, and agro foods and commodities sourcing company.
In 2020, during the surge of the Covid- 19 pandemic, Mrs. Kosi Yankey as the Executive Director of the Ghana Enterprises Agency (GEA) was at the helm of affairs to execute the Coronavirus Alleviation Programme Business Support Scheme (CAPBuSS), a government of Ghana policy to cater for MSMEs. The objective of the program was to save about 92 percent of Ghana’s businesses during the pandemic. The execution of CAPBuSS has received global accolades as a blueprint for economies with a large informal sector.
Mrs. Kosi Yankey together with five other global leaders of African descent was selected as the 2021 cohort of Gurus and Griots an IE University program. The Gurus and Griots is an IE University Academic Accelerator program that provides a platform for African and diasporic solutions to global challenges. The program helps to incorporate the uniquely valuable perspectives of African and Afro-descendant business, policy, and thought leaders into the IE University ecosystem. The center’s aim is to share light on African solutions and innovations to global problems.
Over the course of a year-long program, participants will collaborate with IE teams to develop multimedia educational materials and programming that center African and Afro-descendant expertise for a wide range of audiences, including IE students and alumni, corporate and institutional partners, and academic peers. Participants may also be invited to represent the university on high-profile public stages, at conferences and summits.
Personal life
She is happily married with Children
Limitless Motivation 