Not deterred by having to finance a start-up business using only family sourced capital Ghana’s Kofi Dadzie is now Chief Executive Officer of one of Africa’s most impressive IT firms.
Dadzie moved from Ghana to work and study in the United States where he gained a degree in Computer Engineering from Vanderbilt University.
He began working in a variety of roles related to systems technology, software automation and online commercial platforms at Whirlpool Corporation before gaining employment as a Senior Analyst for Dell Computing. Then at the age of only 24 he set his sights on the African IT markets.
Co-founding Rancard Solutions Ltd in 2001 he began growing his software development business into an award winning company that now spans West Africa and competes in 32 markets across Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
Boasting clients such as Vodafone, BBC, MTV and Google, Rancard was recently selected as one of the top 15 companies of the continent during the Africa Awards for Entrepreneurship.
Dadzie credits his success to continued development. Embracing a steep learning curve of business management techniques allowed the business to grow alongside its founder.
“Learn the system and apply yourself to it. Understand your marketing, understand your accountant, understand ethics and understand operations because you’ve got to be able to manage yourself, your people, your market and your product,” Dadzie told the BBC.
The rise of Rancard and Kofi Dadzie is a perfect example of decisive decision making and aspirational thinking, though Dadzie does urge some caution for those thinking about taking their first steps into business.
“Spend a whole lot more time planning and understanding your market, and keep redeveloping your market and planning strategy until it makes sense in numbers… don’t start until you figure that out.”
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