Kofi Owusu-Bempah’s PASH Global - Why should white guys have all the fun?
KOFI Owusu-Bempah became a lawyer because someone told him lawyers made a lot of money. So off he went, to study law, followed by a job at the prestigious global law firm Linklaters LLP.
After falling in love with Brazil during a gap year, he tried to put off work a little longer.
His ‘typical’ Ghanaian mother would hear none of this, especially as Bempah’s starting salary, she discovered, was more than she’d ever earned as a nurse.
But the spirit of the notorious favelas of Brazil, where as a volunteer, Bempah worked with at-risk teenagers, never left him.
His experience (along with his formative years in Ghana) convinced him ‘of the power of social infrastructure to transform lives’. That led him to qualify and specialise, in project finance law.
Bempah advised governments, public sector entities, sponsors and lenders on major projects, ranging from hospitals and schools in the UK to oil refineries in the Middle East, roads in Nigeria and petrochemical plants in Latin America.
His experience was meant to be a ‘springboard into something entrepreneurial’. As he puts it, ‘law was never the end game’. But he quickly got caught up in the rat race, typical of high achievers in the global financial markets, and would begin to drift away from his original plan.
What seemed straightforward only a few years earlier had become more complex. He enjoyed the frenetic pace of life advising on energy and infrastructure deals, loved the people he worked with, the nature of the work and its impact. Plus he was making a ton of money, relevant because his personal responsibilities were beginning to increase.
Financial crisis
Bempah was one of the casualties of the 2008 global financial crisis. He was made redundant by Linklaters. Then the US law firm, Orrick Herrington and Sutcliffe offered him a bigger pay check and bigger responsibilities. So off he went, deferring yet again, his entrepreneurial ambitions.
Serendipity was to change that. Thanks to ‘Why should white guys have all the fun’, a book about how Reginald Lewis, an African-American entrepreneur, built his billion-dollar empire.
While attending a conference on Africa at London Business School, Bempah was carrying Lewis’s book when he was approached by his future business partner, Vine Mwense. Like Bempah, Mwense had also been inspired by that book.
What started as a conversation about the book soon became a friendship. It turned out Mwense also worked in project finance and like Bempah believed in using infrastructure to bridge social divides. They subsequently began to explore the possibility of doing something together.
A few months prior, the UK Government had implemented a Renewables Obligation Certification Scheme, to provide subsidies as a way of encouraging investment into the renewables sector and meeting its commitment to the EU to generate 15 per cent of power from renewables by 2020.
As the scheme was new, few people were involved in it. Even fewer people could structure and finance renewable energy projects under the scheme. But Bempah and Mwense, were ahead of the curve, having already advised on a number of projects under the scheme.
PASH Global
So, the two formed PASH Global to develop solar projects in the UK. PASH is an acronym for Pan African Soleil Holdings, Soleil being the French word for sun.
When pitching to potential investors, they were often told to focus on African deals given their respective Ghanaian and Zimbabwean heritage.
But they refused to be pigeonholed. And rightly so, given the geographic breath of their experiences. That global ambition paid off. After a fiercely competitive process, PASH won a tender to provide a hybrid power solution to St. Helena Island, the remote British Overseas Territory in the South Atlantic Ocean. The $10m project, when completed, will provide most of St. Helena’s power.
In addition to St Helena, PASH has invested in West Africa’s largest solar plant - a 50MW project in Mali. Current projects in development are in Puerto Rico, Ghana, Ukraine, Sierra Leone, Pakistan, Zambia, Ecuador and Argentina. The dream is to raise and invest over $1 billion in power projects over the next 5 years. This means a lot of time away from home and his three kids.
Background
As a child, Bempah lived with his grandmother before joining his parents in the UK. And until he started a family of his own, his grandmother’s home in Mankoadze in the Central Region of Ghana provided him the greatest happiness. ‘When I needed a little cheering up, I would fly from wherever I was in the world to play Ludo with her, eat local food and chill. That’s my idea of perfect happiness – being around family.”
His late grandmother instilled in Bempah a deep sense of cultural pride and a desire to contribute to Africa’s development. He’s currently reading Robert Edgerton’s ‘The fall of the Asante Empire – The hundred-year war for Africa’s gold’ and books about the great American industrialists – Carnegie, Ford, J.P Morgan.
For Bempah, his success comes with a passion – to lift those less fortunate than him and to invest in future leaders, particularly young men and women of African descent.
And he’s having a ton of fun doing so. Further proof that white guys are not the only ones having all the fun.
