Talent is everywhere. Access is not.
Africans Who Invest started when Gideon Ampofo was a junior in college.
By then he had already spent time inside the industry, learning how investors evaluate businesses, how markets work, and how people actually prepare for competitive careers. What struck him wasn't what he was learning. It was how it traveled: through internships, mentors, and quiet conversations that some students had access to and most never would.
The problem was never a lack of talent.
Too many talented African students could compete for the same opportunities but had never been shown how the industry worked, what the paths looked like, or where to begin. The knowledge existed. The transmission didn't.
He started Africans Who Invest to change that.
AWI began as a small fellowship giving African students earlier access to investing, finance, and mentorship. There was no institution behind it and no funding base. For its first four years, Gideon funded the organization from his own paycheck while a growing group of volunteers turned the idea into something real: the first Fellows joining training sessions by video call from university campuses across the continent, working through the same material analysts learn on the job.
The bet paid off. Forty-six Fellows have completed the AWI Fellowship and now work across Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and Ireland, in investment banking, global markets, asset management, law, and startups. More than 1,000 students have come through our career programming, guest speakers, and community initiatives.
As AWI grew, so did the ambition. The same access gap that exists in finance exists in financial literacy, entrepreneurship, technology, and capital. Today AWI is building a portfolio of programs that meets young people across that whole journey, from understanding money, to preparing for competitive careers, to building businesses and accessing capital, across Africa, the Caribbean, and the wider diaspora.
Because this was never really about helping people get jobs in finance. It was about making sure talent doesn't go unrealized for the lack of the right information, people, or opportunities.
AWI began with one fellowship.
We are building toward an institution.
A young person can have the ability to become an investor without ever meeting one. They can be capable of building a company without ever learning how a business actually works. They can be ready to compete for the best opportunities in the world — and miss them, because no one showed them the path early enough.
AWI exists to make the path visible.
Exposure matters, but exposure alone is not enough. Young people need knowledge, skills, and networks, and, over time, access to capital and the ability to create opportunity for others. That is why our work follows a longer journey:
The real measure of AWI will not be how many people attend a program.
It will be what they go on to build — and who gets access because they did.