How OZÉ is Helping to Grow Businesses Across Africa

Growing up, Meghan McCormick displayed a flair for bringing her ideas to life and helping people. At the age of 10, she coordinated her classmates to earn thousands of dollars for an HIV/AIDS awareness campaign. While in the university, Meghan launched her first social enterprise, a theatre production and education company. The early days of her youth were very much the start of her entrepreneurial journey.

In 2018, Meghan went on to found one of Africa’s leading business management and fintech companies, OZÉ – a mobile platform, which enables African small business owners to make data-driven decisions in order to expand their operations and gain access to capital. She also leads the company as CEO.

Meghan started her career as a Community Economic Development Volunteer in the United States Peace Corps in Guinea. Whilst serving in the Peace Corps, she co-founded Dare to Innovate,  a social enterprise that funds innovative entrepreneurial ideas on the continent. The platform expanded to become Francophone Africa’s most active small business accelerator. 

Meghan has spent decades of her career perfecting the use of design, entrepreneurship and public-private partnerships to solve some of the toughest business problems around the world.  She holds an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management, where she was a Legatum Fellow for Entrepreneurship in Emerging Markets and an  MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government where she was an Adrian Cheng Fellow in Social Innovation and Change Initiative.

Business Elites Africa had the delight of sitting with this vibrant Africa-focused entrepreneur on how OZÉ has been helping to scale businesses on the continent and what can expect for the future. 

What inspired you to found OZÉ?

My whole career, I’ve focused on how entrepreneurship can become a tool for development, how we can help small businesses start and grow. And despite Dare to Innovate being one of the largest accelerators in Francophone Africa, creating over 500 jobs, there are 1 million African youths joining the job market each year, 500 jobs is only a drop in the bucket.  So that was one of the challenges that I had in the back of my mind.

Read the full story (on page 18) and more exclusives like this on our latest issue below.

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