Kevin Okyere

Kevin Okyere, one of Ghana’s savviest yet understated entrepreneurs, has personally expended in developing the highly promising West Cape Three Points Block 2 offshore Ghana (WCTP2). Springfield Group, the energy conglomerate he founded and controls, owns an 82% interest and operatorship in the block which covers 673 square kilometers in the Gulf of Guinea’s Tano Basin. It’s the first time a homegrown Ghanaian company is exploring for oil, and the stakes are high.

He is breaking bread with a couple of team members on this chilly August evening. Garbed in an untucked official shirt, khaki pants and black sneakers, Okyere looks more like the CEO of a Silicon Valley startup than the head of one of West Africa’s most successful energy conglomerates. His look may be modest; his ambitions are anything but. In just 12 years, Kevin Okyere, only 38, has built his company, Springfield Group, into a $1 billion (annual revenues) multi- faceted Ghanaian energy behemoth. Springfield Group is involved in trading and transporting hydrocarbons, terminalling and storage, gas stations, and recently, oil exploration. The company employs hundreds of people in Ghana and Nigeria.

Kevin Okyere was born in 1980 to an affluent family in Ghana’s gold-rich Ashanti region. His father had built a substantial fortune in construction, steel manufacturing and large-scale cocoa farming, before he was enstooled as a traditional chief. Okyere displayed entrepreneurial promise at a very young age. By the time he was 11, he was already selling iced water to football supporters in the Kumasi Sports Stadium to make extra pocket money. During his family’s annual summer vacation trips to London, he would take on jobs with textile companies in the U.K.