Kojo Appiah

Dr. Kojo Appiah is a Technologist, an Investor and an Entrepreneur.

He has been an Engineering Advisor for several large (multi-billion USD) semiconductor firms in Silicon Valley, California (USA) for over two decades advising product design and engineering teams in the global semiconductor industry. He has also been involved in advisory and entrepreneurial activity in Africa.

Dr. Appiah has pursued entrepreneurial interests in Africa in areas that include renewable energy, Solar PV and the agro supply chain sectors. Kojo was the Founder of KATA Solar Limited, a Solar PV development company incorporated in Ghana, that helped seed and Solar PV adoption across the commercial and industrial sectors in Ghana. Dr. Appiah is currently an investor and advisor at MaxBalo Group (www.maxbalo.com) which is working to accelerate economic growth in Africa by facilitating private lending and affordable working capital for small businesses in Ghana and Africa.

Kojo is a member of the supervisory Regional Steering Committee for the World Bank’s African Centers of Excellence (ACE II) initiative for Eastern and Southern Africa, as a Private Sector and African Diaspora representative. In this role, Dr. Appiah led a program and process, end-to-end, to successfully identify, vet and select incubation centers, from several university-industry partnership proposals, for funding. ACE II (www.ace2.iucea.org) is a World Bank Group initiative that seeks to address regional developmental challenges and demand for skills in key areas such as Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) in Africa.

In the social responsibility arena, Dr. Appiah was a Co-Founder and Chairman of The African Network, Inc. (TAN - www.theafricannetwork.org), a 501 (c)3 non-profit organization founded in Silicon Valley, California in 2005 that focused on fostering community development and entrepreneurship among populations of historical African descent and leveraging resources to enable entrepreneurial, community and broad socio-economic development within these under-represented populations.

Dr. Appiah trained in Materials Science and Management of Technology at the reputable Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia, USA where he obtained a Doctorate degree. Prior to that, he obtained Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Physics from Morehouse College and Emory University, respectively, in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.