Dr. Joseph Siaw Agyepong is the celebrated star of one of the most stunning grass to grass stories in Ghana’s corporate history. From extremely humble beginnings, Dr. Agyepong now sits atop a multimillion dollar empire with interests in waste management, construction, financial services, manufacturing and ICT with footprints in Ghana, China and the Middle East. Unable to continue his education after acquiring a City and Guilds of London Certificate in electrical engineering from the Royal Technical Institute, he joined his mother to sell exercise books in the commercial district of Accra.
The irrepressible young man, however, made the best of the opportunity and he soon set up his own printing press. Next was a T-shirt printing business along with a stint in construction. It was in the mid-2000s, however, when a trip to China introduced him to the tricycles that became emblematic of his waste management company, Zoomlion, that he had his greatest eureka moment, catapulting him from a modestly successful entrepreneur into a national icon with over 250,000 men and women on his payroll. The severally decorated entrepreneur continues to innovate and currently has about thirty companies under his Josspong Group umbrella.
