Kwabena Amporful, MBA ’08
Kwabena Amporful, MBA ’08
Growing up in Ghana, Kwabena Amporful, like most students in his country, had only moderate enthusiasm for education. When he was given the opportunity to go to an international high school, however, everything changed. “I suddenly found everything interesting. Teachers in my high school were alive with material, presented it systematically, and made learning and engaging with it exciting,” he says.
After attending Hampshire College in the United States and heading off to Wall Street to become a financial analyst, Amporful co-founded NEO Africa Foundation, which supported 20 students in 12 secondary schools across Ghana through financial assistance, mentorship, and extra teaching support during the summers. “We realized great results with the student scholars,” he says. “All of them passed their terminal exams, compared to only 25 percent of students nationally, and all of them attended university, versus only 6 percent nationally.”
Amporful attended the MBA program at the Stanford Graduate School of Business “to go back to thinking like an entrepreneur,” he says. After returning to Ghana in 2009 to work with the largest full-service investment bank in Ghana, he decided to take his idea to apply his energies to improving the country’s educational system more seriously. Pinpointing teachers and school leaders as his starting point, he developed the Institute of Teacher Education and Development (INTED).
“Without the encouragement and support of faculty and administrators at Stanford University, and particularly the Center for Social Innovation, I simply couldn’t be doing this project now,” Amporful says. “I’m thrilled to be working on it. The folks on the ground in Ghana are extremely excited that a person from the private sector is looking at solutions to one of their main social problems. It gives them wind in their sails.”