Eric Osiakwan
Eric Osiakwan is the founder and managing partner of Chanzo Capital. He is an investor and developer of new businesses with 25 years of experience spanning 32 countries in Africa gained through several successful tech ventures.
Eric is a leading pioneer of Internet in Africa having worked in multiple countries building Internet Service Providers (ISP) and Information Communications Technology (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 Ghana and Africa ISP Association (GISPA and AfrISPA) for eight years. He then moved on to lead efforts to build submarine cables on the continent using the Open Access Model he co-authored. Eric was a co-founder of The East Africa Marine Systems (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, Nigeria and West Africa.
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 pitch to investors towards doing deals. Over the 10 years of the event, $100M of investments have been made with some exits.
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, Finaccess Limited, 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.
