Professional History: Elizabeth Biney-Amissah is a Partner at E3 Capital, formerly Energy Access Ventures. E3 is an Africa-focused investor that backs companies decentralising and digitising key services. She says that the two most important responsibilities she has are thought leadership and investment execution. As a practitioner who actively works in the market on the ground with her portfolio companies, she interacts with not only the senior leadership of these companies, but also with customers for whom the company's product or service is solving key problems. E3 believes that Africa has the ingredients to spark rapid economic development, but is hampered by poor infrastructure across energy, transport, communications, education, healthcare and banking systems that is stifling growth. It uses venture capital as a disruptor and scaling decentralised, digital infrastructure across the continent.

Elizabeth says she actively helps share data and information with the stakeholders involved in her company's sectors to ensure that business models and ideas can evolve to be sustainable and effective. Along with this, she invests in the most compelling business models and takes an active role on Boards to help direct strategy to bring solutions to life. She says this can only succeed if bridges are built and networks connected so that synergies can be obtained with other sectors and market segments.

Prior to E3, Elizabeth was the Business Development Director of GlobalEQ. The company was evergreen-funded by CDC and Norfund and is an independent energy developer and producer. She led West African strategy and on orginating, developing, or acquiring power generation projects. Elizabeth identified compelling commercial project opportunities, secured the commercial terms of the project, and led the bid process or negotiated bilateral agreements.

She says one of her most rewarding leadership experiences was the building out of the West Africa team at EleQtra/InfraCo Africa, at which she worked before going on to GlobalEQ. Although initially hired to work in the New York office of this Africa-focused infrastructure development firm, it became evident within weeks that they needed a presence on the ground in West Africa to develop their power plant projects in Ghana and Cape Verde and pipeline projects in West Africa. While it was early in her career, it was an opportunity not only to build something in her home country of Ghana, but also to create jobs for the very talented Ghanaians work with this company. It led to a strong team that delivered the first commercially financed IPPs in Ghana and Cape Verde with local and regional partners who were able to attract international finance

Elizabeth has also worked with a Gender & Climate Smart Investing Working Group since 2019 and serves as a Board Director for Nuru SARL in the Democratic Republic of Congo which is a pioneering off-grid utility in Goma, DRC. She is also a Board Director, at candi Solar, which provides commercial and industrial solar solutions for SMEs in Southern Africa and India; a Board Director, for SunCulture, which offers solar-powered water pumps for irrigation in Sub-Saharan Africa; and a Board Director at ManoCap Energy, which offers commercial and industrial solar and storage solutions in West Africa. She also assisted Cenpower Kpone obtain the first commercially-financed IPP in Ghana, which represented 15% of the installed capacity in Ghana at that time. It was the first African energy investment for Sumitomo Corporation of Japan. Apart from English, Elizabth speaks two Ghanain languages as well as Mandarin and is learning French.

Academic and professional credentials: Bachelor of Arts in Molecular Biology from Princeton University
Beijing Normal University - Princeton in Beijing - Chinese Language Immersion Program
Masters of Public Administration from Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government

Programs: Elizabeth is a Fellow of the Edward S. Mason Program in Public Policy & Management.