Nana Yaa Boakyewaa Amoah is a Macro-Economist focusing on strategic planning and providing creative-problem solving approaches to start-up and organizational challenges; she advises a wide range of private and public sector clients on socio-economic and human capital investment for growth and impact in sub-Saharan Africa. She has built her expertise in strategic advisory and business coaching over 13 years leading regional & country portfolio management, policy analysis & implementation, private sector engagement, governance, strategic communications and marketing, resource mobilization and advocacy, capacity and systems building, trade and investment, business development, ESG compliance, corporate governance and leadership.
Nana has managed regional USAID programs and UN humanitarian field operations centered on crafting tailored leadership methods across Africa. She works with local and SMEs and MSE businesses, regional economic communities, governments, communities, and donors providing support in capabilities such as strategy and operations, leadership and management, agriculture, food and nutrition security, climate change, resilience-building, women and youth economic empowerment, regional integration and trade and investment.
Nana is actively involved in initiatives that promote human capital enhancement through investment, training, and coaching. Branching out on her own in the capacity as an Independent Consultant, Nana currently serves as the Senior Advisor to the Executive Director of CORAF – the West and Central Africa Council of Agriculture Research and Development – where she conceptualizes mechanisms to develop partnerships and attract private sector investment to collaborate in building the resilience of the regional food system and agri-science industry as well as improving the livelihoods of farmers and growth of agribusiness. She was instrumental in developing winning proposals and facilitating stakeholder engagements to secure over $500million for the implementation of a West Africa Regional Food Security Resilience Program funded by the World Bank as well as the Agricultural Technologies and Innovations Scaling Up Project for Increasing the Resilience of Production Systems and Family Farms in West and Central Africa (TARSPro) funded by the Swiss Development Cooperation (SDC).
Nana is active in initiatives that contribute towards her mission of a transformed, better developed and more humanitarian-conscious society in Africa. She served as Head of Field Office with the United Nations’ World Food Program (UN-WFP) in Bertoua, Cameroon where she was responsible for managing field operations in the East of Cameroon and ensuring the effective and efficient delivery of food assistance programs to over 100,000 CAR refugees and local vulnerable populations. Nana led networking and partnership building initiatives to improve assistance packages for beneficiaries, developed and sustained liaison with local government authorities, other UN agencies, and other partners engaged in improving food security. Before joining the UN, Nana provided management and capacity building expertise when she served as the Regional Program Manager for the $69-million USAID-Feed the Future Building Capacity for African Agricultural Transformation (Africa Lead II Program). She was responsible for the design and implementation of the West Africa Institutional Capacity Strengthening and Leadership strategy and leveraged financial resources from USAID to enable West Africa’s public and private sector actors to increase agricultural productivity, improve agricultural and trade policies, regulations and standards, improve food and nutrition security, while positioning the region and its member states to become self-reliant.
Nana has an affinity for strategic communications and marketing which she further mastered while at a PR consulting firm in Europe. She is fascinated by the power of information and media communications to influence trends throughout the world, ultimately beginning with the consumer. As an Account Manager in Weber Shandwick Brussels, Nana advised C-suite clients and high-level executives to invest in emerging markets, establish a strong company brand to subsequently increase revenues and ROI. She not only gained solid insights in e-communications and crisis management, but developed capabilities across automobile, corporate finance, healthcare and lifestyle industries in Germany, UK, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxemburg, Spain, Italy. She executed Communications/PR programs on clean tech and auto issues for clients tackling second-generation biofuels and low global warming products challenge. Prior to this, Nana worked as an Executive officer at the Embassy of the Republic of Ghana in Washington DC, honing her diplomatic skills and voicing the concerns of citizens abroad to the attention of decision makers in Ghana. To enhance investor relations between Ghana and the United States, she developed a “Doing Business Guidebook” to attract potential investors to Ghana and supported the department to build key partnerships. Nana is a native English speaker and fluent in French with a working knowledge of Spanish. She holds a Masters’ in International Political Economy from the Brussels School of International Studies at the University of Kent and Bachelor’s degree in Economics and French from Mount Holyoke College, USA.
