Curated from MIT Technology Review — Here’s what matters right now:
Baafour Asiamah-Adjei ’03 is the founder and CEO of one of Ghana’s largest private power companies, Genser Energy —an entrepreneurial engineer who aims to deliver sustainable energy across West Africa. And he credits MIT with much of his success. But when he was applying to colleges, the Institute wasn’t even on his radar. The son of an encouraging primary school teacher in Tafo, Ghana, he’d earned a spot at the storied Achimota School and excelled. Still, he didn’t think he was smart enough for MIT. Asiamah-Adjei was accepted to Lehigh University, where he planned to major in engineering. But when he went to the US embassy in Accra for his mandatory meeting with Nancy Keteku, then the regional educational advising coordinator for West and Central Africa, the first thing she said was “You got a perfect score on your SAT. Why didn’t you apply to MIT?” “I didn’t believe I’d get in,” he says, “so I didn’t even try.” The admission deadline was two days away. Asiamah-Adjei finished the application in one. His father drove it to the airport and engaged the help of a flight attendant at Ghana Airways, who couriered it to New York and mailed it in time. The spark of purpose Asiamah-Adjei got into MIT and thrived. After earning his degree in mechanical engineering, he landed a demanding role at the global consulting firm McKinsey and worked on teams that optimized flight routes for FedEx, determined best practices for airline engine maintenance, and devised practical workflows for moving factories from one country to another. The job was intellectually challenging and fulfilling. But he felt something was missing in his life: purpose. In 2005, Asiamah-Adjei took a rare break to visit Pablo Tribin ’01, a friend since they’d bonded at an intense MIT $50K Global Startup Workshop in Australia. Tribin and his father, Hugo Tribin, SM ’63, had just established a power company, Genser (for “generation services”), in their home country of Colombia with a holding company in the US. As the friends floated in the pool at Tribin’s apartment building in Miami, Tribin asked Asiamah-Adjei if he had ever thought about working in the power industry. In 2005, only 41% of Ghana’s population had access to electricity. Much of that electricity was generated by the Akosombo and Kpong dams on the Volta River, but relying on hydroelectric power made Ghana susceptible to climate fluctuations that affect water levels. Recalling how much his MIT thermodynamics class (then called Heat and Mass Transfer) with Ernest Cravalho had stayed with him, Asiamah-Adjei realized that perhaps delving into energy was not such a wild idea. “The seed had been sown,” he says. He took a year off from McKinsey to go to Ghana and explore. Baafour Asiamah-Adjei ’03 (right) reviews a section of Genser Energy’s natural gas pipeline network with construction superintendent Stephen Ayisi. BISMARK ADAMAFIO ARYEE That year led him to realize that Ghana desperately needed a more ro
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Original reporting: MIT Technology Review