Eric Osiakwan

Managing Partner at Chanzo Capital

Moderator

Eric Osiakwan is an investor and developer of new businesses with 25 years of experience spanning 32 countries in Africa gained through a number of successful tech start-ups. Eric is a leading pioneer of internet in Africa having worked in multiple countries building internet service providers (“ISP”) and ICT businesses. Some of his successful exits include iBurst in South Africa, One2Net in Uganda, BusyInternet in Ghana, etc. Eric also founded and ran the Africa ISP Association for eight years, during which the ISP industry grew by almost 120%. He then moved on to leading efforts to build submarine cables on the continent. Eric was part of a public-private partnership in Kenya that built and launched the TEAMS submarine fibre cable, the first to connect East Africa to the rest of the world. He subsequently contributed to the building of terrestrial fibre networks in Ghana and Nigeria.

Eric has been seeding and investing in early-stage tech ventures across the continent. In 2013, he co-founded www.angelafrica.net, an Africa-wide network of angel investors, and then www.angelfairafrica.com which brings select entrepreneurs to present to potential investors. Over the 10 years of the event, $58M of investments have been made with one exit in 2019. He was an ICT Consultant for the World Bank, Soros Foundations, UNDP, USAID, USDoJ, USDoS, African governments, and private firms.

Eric currently serves on the board of the Pan Africa Project, Ghana Cyber City, Nyaho Medical Centre, Star Assurance and StarLife Assurance.

He authored “The KINGS of Africa’s Digital Economy”, co-authored the “Open Access Model”, adopted globally by the telecommunications industry, “Negotiating the Net” – the politics of Internet Diffusion in Africa and “The Internet in Ghana” with the Mosaic Group. He was invited to contribute ideas to Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Commission for Africa. Eric is an MIT, Harvard and Stanford Fellow and holds a master’s in Finance and Investment Management from Salford Business School.