Ethel Delali Cofie is a leading tech entrepreneur from Ghana and the founder and CEO of Edel Technology Consulting, a company that provides IT and software services as an enabler and catalyst for businesses to achieve their goals.
Ethel is the founder of Women in Tech Africa, initiator of the 1st Pan African woman in tech meetup and was shortlisted for the UN GEM Tech Award for work supporting women in ICT.
She has been featured by the BBC and CNN for her work in technology and promoting women’s leadership. Ethel sits on numerous boards and is also a President Obama Washington Fellow for Leadership (YALI).
Remember the mistakes you make are all part of learning, so instead of overthinking things just do it, and on your way down you will figure it out.
Ethel Cofie is a woman with a genuine passion for technology and is a real advocate for women’s entrepreneurship in the sector. Today, her company Edel Consultancy, which she founded in 2013, is the primary vehicle for driving her technology passion. At the same time, it provides a platform from which to run powerful women in technology networking groups and alliances, focused on education and enhancing women’s careers in the sector.
In the preceding decade, she gained invaluable global industry experience working with a wide range of innovative and transformational tech systems and products in different capacities including Product/Solutions Management, Business Analysis, Software Development, Service Management, Strategy Development and Implementation.
Her career path took her to the UK between 2006 and 2009 where she undertook her MSc in Distributed Systems at Brighton University, followed by a corporate position as a Business and Systems Analyst with RDF Solutions. Both proved to be invaluable experiences that were to help shape her next career moves.
I failed a lot along the way but learned many lessons, which made it easier to get back up and try again. So persistence was key in my development as a professional and a businesswoman.
She is also a woman entrepreneur that believes in making a positive contribution to society through her knowledge, expertise and innovative ideas. In 2010, she worked on a number of game changing social projects in Africa, such as the Ford Foundation funded election-monitoring project for Nigerian Elections, and also the Bill and Melinda Gates Funded Mobile Technology for Health. The project was so successful that it has been implemented in Ghana, Uganda, Tanzania and India, proving that technology can indeed save lives. She was also the Technology Consultant for Dream Perfect in Sierra Leone, working on new Mobile Technology Solutions in the country.
Having made a considerable contribution to the success of these social development projects in Africa, she returned to the corporate world, taking up the position of Head of Commercial Solutions at Vodafone in Ghana, responsible for managing a team of technical and business analysts. This new role gave her a different outlet with which to fulfill her passion of supporting businesses in their efforts to provide customers with great services and products, to provide excellent customer service, and make profits by providing excellent and appropriate technology solutions. After resigning from her role at Vodafone in 2013 following a successful career with the company, she launched Edel Consultancy as the new vehicle for driving her passion.
I have 3 passions: Technology, Female Leadership and Empowerment, and Entrepreneurship.
“I created women in tech Ghana because I wanted to create a girls’ club – if corporate promotions and business has been conducted over the golf club and over beers, then I was going to create a space for women in tech to help each other move up and excel.” She said.
I believe entrepreneurship is Africa’s way out of poverty. Entrepreneurship is on the increase, because Africa, at last has been emerging and the economies are booming — several countries are starting to really increase entrepreneurial activity and move to opportunity entrepreneurship, rather than necessity entrepreneurship.
Ethel Cofie is a real inspiration, not just to women entrepreneurs in Africa’s tech sector, but to all those women who would like to build a career or a successful business in this highly competitive and male dominated industry. She is living proof that with enough tenacity, self-belief, and a vision to be an industry game changer for the benefit of others, you can achieve incredible results.
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