For connecting hearts—and wallets—across Africa

Senior Project Manager at eProcess International (Ecobank Group Technology) ǀ Accra, Ghana

After earning his undergraduate degree in economics from the University of Ghana, Kevin Kwakye-Safo caught a lucky break. For his national service – a paid year all graduates of Ghanaian higher-education institutions spend before entering the labor force – he was assigned to the banking sector. Placed with the project management team in Barclays’ Accra, he had no idea that a decade later he’d be a senior project manager providing financial empowerment to African families all over the continent.

At Barclays, Kevin gained unique insight into the intersection of banking products and management. "Every new thing that the bank was doing, it came to us first,” he says. “The strategy of the bank sat with us, and we were executing it through projects. And so the learning curve – meeting new people, new innovative ways of doing stuff – caught my attention.”

Kevin credits some of his growth to PMI resources, which he calls “out of this world,” and his supportive PMI “family”, which keeps him inspired and continuously learning. He stays curious about new trends, including the oil and gas sector and artificial intelligence, and constantly seeks ways to expand his knowledge.

His proudest project management endeavor has been the electronic African wallet project he led at Absa Bank Ghana. Before this, he led the transformation of Barclays into Absa Bank Ghana; Kevin calls the process of transferring the bank’s core from London to Johannesburg and rebranding all bank elements “the scrum of scrums.” Once Absa was firmly re-established, Kevin managed the creation and implementation of mobile banking, which breaks free from the walls of brick and mortar banks.

The digital wallet system allows customers to send and receive money on their cell phones anywhere across Africa. “I want to change the narrative, from my perspective, to financial empowerment, not financial inclusion,” he says. “Financial empowerment is ensuring that anyone, anywhere, can transact, can move things, can make family happy, can make everyday life meaningful. And we do this through transaction, through communicating: sending funds to your son or someone in need just at a click of a button. It saves human lives. Everyone is able to be part of a financial journey.”

Beyond the intricacies of project management, Kevin knows firsthand about working around challenges. As a person with a disability – stuttering – he was teased mercilessly as a child and not always called on in class because others were impatient with how his mouth received his brain’s messages to speak. His late father, a pilot for the now-shuttered Ghana Airways, always urged him: press on, regardless. And Kevin became an expert in self-advocacy and self-accessibility by finding tools for working with his disability to build confidence in his public speaking – and in himself.

While Kevin plans to one day work on one of PMI’s Most Influential Projects, one of his fondest project achievements to date was planning his own wedding five years ago. He says that he’s found many ways to implement project management in his personal life and is now busier than ever keeping up with his two children, a preschooler and an infant.

Kevin is a few months into a new senior project manager position at eProcess International, where he leads a team working across the globe – including in India, Germany, Bulgaria, and Kenya – on a data-driven, AI-powered anti-money laundering enterprise solution to detect and investigate suspicious transactions.

But for Kevin, success is not his alone. “I'm a people person. I love to engage,” he says, laughing. The concept of engagement has a simple, yet rich, significance for Kevin: “Ensuring that you’re carrying everyone along.”