Kodjo Adovor | Founder & CEO, Kevi Capital
“The “why” is to change the educational system, so that it serves our people better, serves our country better.”
THE PULL OF FAMILY VALUES, FOUNDING A BUSINESS WITH SYSTEMIC IMPACT & INVESTING FOR THE LONG TERM IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA
With 15 years of commodities trading and consulting in investment banking, and an MBA under his belt, in 2017, Kodjo felt the time was right to leave the US and return to his home country of Ghana to found the impact investing fund, Kevi Capital.
With the aim of building infrastructure to support more people in higher education in Ghana, Kodjo talks about the challenges of setting up a fund investing in social infrastructure in Ghana, his MBA experience at Yale and the concept of divinity in business, feeling confined in his identity and abilities on the trading floor, his love of Italian wine and the family & cultural values that drive his business and informs how he leads.
Hi Kodjo, thank you so much for speaking to me, tell us more about Kevi Capital and what you’re currently doing in Accra.
I set up Kevi Capital primarily to fund social infrastructure in Ghana.
I’ll give you the example of the University of Ghana, it was built in the 1940’s. They had in mind a maximum of 4,000 students, maybe 5,000 at the time. Now it currently has about 60,000, and it's growing. You can share the classrooms for teaching and run classes 24-hours a day but what you cannot share is the rooms where people sleep on campus.
As a result, there's a large deficit of student housing that the government hasn't figured out a way to bridge. In almost all universities this is the case. Understandably, the history of some of these universities was that they were built by the British for indirect rule, and very select people would go so they would go into civil service or leadership in the government.
So were they intended for Non-Africans at that time?
No, they were very much intended for Africans. Unlike the Southern African countries, where the Dutch and the British wanted to stay, in West Africa, here in Ghana, it was very clear very early that it was a harsh terrain and harsh weather. It wasn't great for foreign people to live. So in the 1920s, realising that colonialism wasn't sustainable, I think a few of the countries, primarily, French, German and British, adopted indirect rule. There was a need to train the locals, and a very few select of them, to represent the interests here, so they didn't have to be here all the time.
This is when these schools were built. It was always a very few select of the Ghanaian population.
“A poor family looks and says, "Well, you got into the school, but there's no housing. We have to pay for you to stay somewhere, and we don't have any uncles in the big city so you're not going."
These schools have since have had to expand to accommodate the masses in a way that they weren't designed to do. There's a deficit and when that happens, it's the poorest of the families that don't make it because it comes at a high cost. A poor family looks and says, "Well, you got into the school, but there's no housing. We have to pay for you to stay somewhere, and we don't have any uncles in the big city so you're not going."
We want to help fill that gap so these students can have an education and self-determined beyond that point. I set up Kevi Capital to build infrastructure, for all the schools in this situation. That's the first mandate that we have.
Are there challenges you’re facing doing this?
Yes because these are primarily public institutions. You deal with semi-government officials when you sign a deal with a university to build their housing for them. They don't put up any money, so we raise the money. We build, and we cash flow it over a period of time and then we hand it over back to them.
“They’re not thinking about that, they want return right now. It can be challenging, but the opportunities are there.”
There are people who only want short term gain over the interest of students and the nation in 20 - 30 years from now. They’re not thinking about that, they want return right now. It can be challenging, but the opportunities are there.
The other challenge can be that we need local money. Foreign money might not have the patience to wait for 25 years for the return on investment.
If I did a plot of how the Ghanaian Cedi, the local currency, has changed over the lifetime, you realise a lot of political interference and a lot of depreciation of the currency. If you put your dollars in Ghana, chances are over 25 years, you'll see a significant deterioration. As a result, we have to go with local pension funds. Interestingly, they're willing, the system has been liberalised considerably so pension funds could invest in private equity funds (alternative investments) like mine.
So that’s where we are. Everything is set up for us to succeed and to really have an impact with this social infrastructure mandate.
And why is this important to you?
For me, the moment you're building these institutions for them, you begin to influence the way they do things.
That's where my goal is. Some of these institutions haven't seen investment or growth for decades. I spoke to a guy recently who is a final year computer science major, and they still write code on pen and paper. These schools are probably stuck in the '80s if not the '60s and the '50s. Partly because of the lack of access to technology. It’s funny, the guy who is teaching them probably doesn't have a cell but the kids have their cell phones, and they can write code on their phone. If I was teaching that class, I'd say, "Here's your assignment, write the code on your phone and run it on the internet and make it successful and send me the code and the results."
It feels like there’s quite a big shift in generations and a lot of change has happened that’s causing a generational gap?
Yes, it happened very quickly. That's why the teacher is probably not tuned into how competitive the world is now. In his generation, if you went to university, you are likely to be the richest guy from your village. That has changed. It's no longer the case that a university degree guarantees you anything. That you have to get out there and use your talents and use everything you've learned to advise yourself and advise the people you represent.
We're hoping to bridge the gap.
“I believe our education should be defined by the problems that we seek to solve, instead of a curriculum somebody designed many years ago.”
I feel like there's a lot that we could change in the educational system here, because I believe our education should be defined by the problems that we seek to solve, instead of a curriculum somebody designed many years ago.
When the British were here, when they designed Sociology majors and Psychology majors, we hadn't started growing cocoa yet, so we now have to rethink. If cocoa is such a precious money earner for us, maybe we need more students who can work in that area. Students that can bring together a group of three or four of their classmates, and set up a chocolate brand, find the funding to keep pursuing it and hopefully, it becomes an international chocolate brand. Defining themselves by that and a product of Ghana they can be proud of it.
That's the ultimate goal. That through building infrastructure, we influence education in the right direction so that when they finish their studies in University of Ghana, they’re not looking to get a job at a bank or looking to go to Canada or the US or the UK, but that they'll find opportunity here.
So who is the ‘WE’ of Kevi Capital?
Good question. It's mostly me and this is where the leadership comes in. I see that there a lot of like-minded people [that want to make a difference in business] but it's a combination of the fear, not wanting to leave the comfort. I think there's an army of people who want to see that happen, but they haven't left the comfort yet.
I'm hoping that my success, however anybody defines it, would include a pathway for people who want to take this route and be comfortable doing that. That you don't have to be stuck on Wall Street, or you can still be well compensated here and feel even more abundantly that you're making an impact.
“I feel like I'm charting a path that would open doors here for people like that. We need to represent all these visions and ideas that haven't found a path to make them real yet.”
I have five brothers and one sister and my brothers are all in the US. One of them is a radiologist in Florida. My brothers have PhDs and what have you, and they're all looking for an opportunity and various ways to do the things that I talk about. I feel like I'm charting a path that would open doors here for people like that. We need to represent all these visions and ideas that haven't found a path to make them real yet.
You have, what would be considered a conventional finance background - Yale, Deloitte and Bank of America Merill Lynch, in the UK and US. What was that like for you?
I think throughout my corporate career, I was conventional but also unconventional in many ways because I never felt settled, never felt like that was home. I did very well, I thought, but I just never felt like that was home. I did what I had to do and, as an immigrant kid who went to the US, there was always a longing to find where I would have peace, because on the trading floor if you're known to be the quant, they want you to be the quant. They don't want you to be the quant who's very good with marketing. It's confusing.
So I found myself confined. You're like this quantitative guy, but you’re also well dressed. You look very nice in the British cut suits and you're confusing us [laughs]. It was a little bit of that. I always felt unsettled, but I think once I got to a certain point, I knew I had to leave.
The only way to leave and self-actualise was to go back to school and pivot fully. There's nothing like the trading floor that you can go and do. You're on the trading floor. You either go to another trade floor or most people who went to these places got wealthy enough that they didn't have to go anywhere after that or at least that was the picture that was painted.
This is where the Kevi Capital seed started?
Yes and so I went to Yale and did an MBA. I understood what I needed to do. My Dad owned a construction company as we were growing up. It was a natural fit to be into something related to that. It was a perfect fit in bringing finance and that background together. It’s always been there.
The vehicle for me was education and the why is to change the educational system so that it serves our people better, serves our country better.
Why did you choose to do an MBA?
That's a good question. I had done well, I had an interesting background, but I was lacking a network. I was lacking something I could plug into easily and get help to do the things I want to do. I had the knowledge and the personality to be able to make things happen but the one thing I was lacking was a network where that would lead me to a pot of money.
“I needed softer skills. I needed to understand marketing more, and I needed to understand networking and leadership and what all of that meant.”
I also wanted the MBA to soften my skills as well. I came from physics and mathematics and had a master's degree in financial mathematics, I was a quant my whole career so to speak. I needed softer skills. I needed to understand marketing more, and I needed to understand networking and leadership and what all of that meant.
These are talents that I felt like I had but never quite brought together. I felt an MBA would be the way to converge all of that.
Do you think the business schools are preparing people well for impact investing and investing in the future of business in that sense?
No, not at all. I went into the MBA very clear-eyed on what I needed to do. The things I needed to bring together and this is why I chose Yale. Yale has a strong law school, there's always a US senator who went to Yale Law school. Cory Booker was one and is running for president. There's always one. Hillary the last time. [laughs]
Yale started as a divinity school like most of them, and they have a strong divinity school.
Somehow though, nobody has figured out how to combine divinity and business. You leave your divinity behind and you just do business.
What do you mean by ‘divinity school’?
Divinity is anything spiritual or anything that anybody feels faith or a belief in. Whether it's Islam or Christianity or nothing or just a belief in laws. It still not particularly taught, but it informs a lot of our lives around the world.
That’s really interesting, and they’re not converging the two?
No, not at all.
Yale has Christian origins but we're not talking about a specific religious informed finance like Islamic finance either. Islamic finance is well studied. We're talking about business decisions and faith. Not the structural part of faith and the things you can do. We're talking about how and what you advertise. We advertise vaping to teenagers, what are we doing?
If you advertise painkillers that you know are going to lead to heroin addiction, but you make millions of dollars, what exactly are you doing there? How does that connect to your faith and the things you claim to believe? Nobody talks about that.
When we organised the impact investing conference at Yale, we were looking for a speaker from the School of Divinity who studies money and business from a point of faith. We couldn't find one.
We found a professor in the School of Management, who was personally a Christian. He wrote that on his website but wasn’t working on the intersection of faith and business decision making. I am still looking for people that can speak to this though.
“If you advertise painkillers that you know are going to lead to heroin addiction, but you make millions of dollars, what exactly are you doing there?”
I think for a long time the current setup has been for people to divorce these two things and just never bring them together. Just go make your money and then on Sunday or Friday, or whenever you go to your church or your place of worship then go do your own thing. Bring the other part of yourself to work. Nobody ever talks about you as a whole person. That your whole person needs to be everywhere you go. You should be a banker in church and a church person in the bank.
How I interpret that is personal values and integrity. The integral thing that connects people to their ‘faith’. Personal values and individualised meaning of integrity can be missing in people’s work lives. There has been an emphasis on, or just an aligning to the business values - what’s written on the meeting room wall - without the inner reflection of what does that exactly mean to me… that was certainly my own personal experience.
Exactly. We teach ethics but ethics doesn't quite address the core, because when you go home, it's not the ethics class that makes you sleep at night, it's your inner beliefs and values.
I think I've gone full circle, and I've sort of come back to my African beliefs. In our traditional beliefs, our ancestors are looking for us to do the right things so that when we meet with them, eventually, in the afterlife, we’re going to account for ourselves. I see how my grandmother and father did this and that influences my beliefs.
“In our traditional beliefs, our ancestors are looking for us to do the right things so that when we meet with them, eventually, in the afterlife, we’re going to account for ourselves.”
My father brought up six of us kids but then there are several kids that are in school that he paid for, I believe 50 kids that he paid for that are not his kids. He’s put people in all kinds of schools around the world.
Now my generation has to do more than that.
I ask myself, ‘How do you do more than that?’ ‘How do I top that?’ That's what I'm hopefully doing with Kevi - continuing the legacy of educating people where they can live a full life, where they can self-actualise. That's the driver more than anything. It's a continuity of a certain way of thinking.
This cultural way of thinking that you’ve grown up within your family, it sounds like it’s driven by a broader connectivity to more than just your own family?
Absolutely. Our culture is a humanist. A human comes first before everything else, before profit. We want to find connection with humans. Also, ‘Charity begins at home’, if we prepare enough people to be self-sufficient, to be educated intellectually within themselves and take the leadership roles that they need to take, they will then go out into the world and they'll be more human. They will represent us in the worlds that they inhabit. We're humanists, we're people who love everybody.
“Hopefully, they pass it on, they do well, they share this human connection and they encourage other people too.”
My Dad has paid fees for people who are in places like Saskatchewan (Canada) and Bergen, Norway. The people there are PhDs and professors, all different roles, and they take the humanity with them and that's what it represents. It all starts from here and hopefully, they pass it on, they do well, they share this human connection and they encourage other people too. That is very much what we believe.
Who are your influencers and mentors that you admire?
I think my parents primarily because of just that, they prepared us to be very successful in the world. You're getting to meet all kinds of very awesome people and do great things and make a lot of money but the principle is always simple…do well and whatever you do, help others. By all means, make money but it shouldn't be just about you. That's the driving force. It's these principles, and these principles carry on. They come from the people before them. My 90-year-old grandmother, on my mom’s side, still wakes up and if you give her a bag of rice, she would finish it in a week because she's cooking for the whole village. There's this sense that by all means, get something for yourself but in the process, make sure you're helping somebody else.
Anyone out in the impact investing world?
I see several. I personally met Sir Ronald Cohen, who spoke at our conference. He's a big influencer in this regard. They've done well to bring attention to this in many, many ways. I see the Ford Foundation president, Darren Walker. He asks a lot of questions. Why are we still doing things the way we did, and we claim to be what we are. I think that's important. It’s important to ask these questions. I like him just for asking these questions that make some people get uncomfortable. Things like ‘Why are we doing things the way we did them in 1950?’ or ‘Why are all our contractors men?’
What are you working in terms of your own personal leadership style?
For me, it's a big discovery, leadership, especially having come back to Ghana and seeing the deficits that are here. The positions of leadership or people who are in them are not necessarily the best leaders we have.
I keep asking myself, and as I take new leadership roles, how I evolve, I want to be able to track that because it's very easy to lose purpose. You get caught up in the things that you do and lose sight of the original purpose. I see a lot of that here. People, when they make the million, then they're looking for the billion, and they lose sight of why they were there in the first place. How do I avoid that? Am I going to be like that when I'm in a position where I feel very powerful? It is a constant search for me internally because I see bad examples of leadership. It's why our countries fail all the time, and they're not living up to their potential. So it's very difficult for me to reconcile what I see from what I know. My hope is that I don't become that.
How do you make sure that you’re looking after your mind, body, spirit?
I'm a wine expert. I love Italian wine. I am one of the very few people in the world who are certified Italian wine ambassadors. It puts me in touch with a lot of very good chefs from around the globe. It takes me to Italy many times in a year. Wine is also a continual learning journey because you never know enough, especially in Italy where there are over 2,000 grapes. It's my way of stretching myself and using all my talents. This year I setup the Africa Wine Club with the theme of “Food, Culture, and Business”. The goal is to bring privileged Africans together, connect and work together across Africa to make the next century the African Century.