CEO of Innohub Limited, Nelson Madiba Amo has emerged winner of the Investment category at the maiden edition of the 2022 Forty Under 40 Africa Awards held at the Kempinski Hotel Gold Coast City in Accra.

He also won the ‘People’s Choice Award’, representing the nominee with the highest number of votes across all the categories.

The prestigious award in the Investment Category was in recognition of his dedication and commitment to supporting Small and Growing Businesses in Ghana and Africa to design robust scaling plans and helping them to unlock investment capital for growth.

As Founder and CEO of a leading Business Accelerator and Growth Consulting firm, Nelson has a very strong view of the need to support the growth of businesses as an avenue for job creation and economic development.   

Speaking to the media after the award, Mr Amo thanked his family, friends, Innohub’s partners, Board and team members, and everyone who have supported his dreams to this far.

Madiba Amo urged African leaders across to be deliberate about creating the right strategies and policies to drive investment ventures that can promote innovation, creating jobs and decent incomes for the ever-increasing youth population, which he described as a “ticking time bomb” in Africa.

He also wants African leaders to remove artificial trade barriers to ensure smooth mobility across the continent.

 He explained how he was recently invited to attend a meeting in an African country where visa application was too cumbersome. This caused a missed opportunity to attend a program in that country whilst his friends from non-African countries could easily acquire the visa on time.

He called on the need for “Africatalysts” to stand up and promote investments in the growth and development of the content.

This year’s events which saw dignitaries across the continent was in partnership with the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture in Ghana and the Ministry of Youth and Sports which seeks to identify, honor and celebrate a cross-section of the continent’s most influential and accomplished business leaders under the age forty from a wide range of industries which includes people committed to business growth, professional excellence and community services.

Mr Nelson has experience in business development, growth consulting, grant management, business model innovation, design of enterprise support initiatives.

The visibly elated CEO is an alumnus of the Oxford Social Finance Program at Oxford University.

 He has an MSc. in Development Studies from LSE, with a special interest in Business Model Innovation at the bottom of the Pyramid. He also has a certificate in “Unlocking Finance for Emerging Markets and Developing Economies”, a World Bank course, as well as a certificate in “Startup Accelerators in the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem” from the Golda Meir MASHAV Carmel International Training Center in Israel.

He is the Grant Manager, Programme Lead for mLab Ghana, a project under Ghana’s Ministry of Communication with funding from the World Bank, with the objective of promoting the development of digital start-ups, supporting them develop their prototype and launching on the market.

He also led the Ghana Climate Venture Facility project with funding from the World Bank.

Nelson is also the Founder of Accra Angels Network, an entity dedicated to driving investments into early-stage startups in Ghana.