The Ghana Climate Innovation Centre welcomes Ruka Sanusi as its Executive Director. Ruka, who takes over the role from Dr. Fred McBagonluri, Dean of Ashesi’s Engineering School, has over 20 years of international consulting experience in the UK and Africa, in disciplines spanning business strategy and operations, business transformation and business management. Her sectors of experience include international development, government and public sector, banking and finance, health, education, as well as sustainability and climate change.
Prior to joining the Centre, Ruka founded and led Alldens Lane, a business advisory firm with a unique focus of supporting businesses in the small and growing business sector – particularly women-owned and women-led enterprises – across Africa. Before founding Alldens Lane, Ruka served as part of the senior management team at world-leading accounting and professional services firm, PricewaterHouseCoopers (PwC), in Ghana and Nigeria, for over a decade. Prior to her work with PwC, she worked with the global corporation, Crown Agents, in the UK, as part of their international consulting team, serving clients in Africa and the Caribbean. Ruka has advised governments, public sector organizations and private corporations on international projects and assignments in 16 sub-Saharan African countries. She has lived in the United Kingdom, Tanzania, Ghana and Nigeria.
In her role as Executive Director of GCIC, Ruka will be responsible for developing and executing the GCIC strategy, recruiting and managing a team, developing and managing a diverse set of partnerships, continuously adapting and refining the GCIC service offering and sustainability model, overseeing the planning and administration of the GCIC, and directing all activities which support the GCIC’s growth and mission.
“The GCIC presents entrepreneurial and innovation responses to the global climate change challenge," Ruka explained. "The Centre’s entrepreneurs and businesses will be turning those challenges into opportunities in that they will be presenting and or deepening their pioneering solutions to Ghana’s climate change issues. What a better way to secure future generations, starting from today? I am excited about the opportunity – it is a privilege and a responsibility that the Centre will not take lightly.”
Launched in 2016, the Ghana Climate Innovation Center which is hosted by Ashesi, will help over 100 local clean technology companies develop and scale innovative solutions to climate change, and enable over 300,000 Ghanaians to increase resilience to climate change in the next ten years.