Development Facilitator
Paulina Adjei brings 13 years of experience in innovation and entrepreneurship, women and youth development, export market readiness, design thinking and facilitation. She presents a lived experience and a practical working knowledge in all of Ghana's 16 regions, collaborating with the private sector, government, development agencies, academia, community groups and informal associations. She hones her experience in developing and implementing entrepreneurship support programs on access to market, finance and skills, with a focus on women and youth-led businesses for sustained growth.
Through direct engagement with Ghana's entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem, she has gained valuable insights into the world of business and bustling informal economies in Africa which are vital sources of livelihoods and job creation. Having worked with global teams and consulted for international agencies such as GIZ, International Trade Centre (ITC), Centre for the Promotion of Exports (CBI), UNDP, Results for Development (R4D) and ActionAid, she has worked on assignments with global teams in the US, Germany, Netherlands, UK, Denmark and managed portfolios in Kenya, Ethiopia, Southern Africa. She presents a balanced outlook in development rooted locally and globally relevant.
Paulina consulted for the UNDP's Livelihood Mapping project where she conducted an in-depth analysis of entrepreneurship programs in Ghana, with a focus on MSME access at regional and district levels. Led field mapping in 8 districts in 3 regions in northern Ghana to identify key challenges, gaps, and opportunities for strengthening local ecosystems. She engaged and mapped 500+ stakeholders including government agencies, private sector, women and youth-led groups, Business Advisory Centres (BACs). At the district level, identified capacity gaps, business readiness, and linkages to financial services. From a gender lens, she elevated gender-specific barriers limiting women's access to finance, participation in local economies, and outlined opportunities in Digital Business, Vocational, and Agriculture to drive MSME growth and job creation, consolidating insights into actionable recommendations and a policy brief to guide gender-responsive and impactful program design.
As Team Leader at Challenges Worldwide, Paulina led teams from Ghana and the UK to deliver a market research and enterprise diagnostics for indigenous enterprises in Tamale. The project assessed operational performance of agribusinesses and manufacturing enterprises, with a focus on marketing, production processes, and supply chain systems for high-potential commodities such as shea butter and fonio. She delivered targeted recommendations and implemented short- to medium-term actions. These included formalizing workflows through process documentation, creating digital profiles for market visibility, addressed certification gaps to enable businesses secure FDA product certification and access new markets. She further facilitated investor and buyer linkages to unlock growth opportunities, and trained production clusters on bookkeeping, financial management, and marketing to strengthen competitiveness of enterprise as a pathway to decent and sustainable livelihoods.
On business coaching by the International Trade Centre (ITC), Paulina managed and coached a cohort of 10 Ghanaian tech MSMEs to strengthen their export potential using the Export Marketing Plan (EMP) framework. Support included internal audits refining value propositions, market and customer segmentation, revenue analysis of top-performing products, and team coaching to boost export readiness. She led strategic partnerships with the Ghana Export Promotion Authority (GEPA) and designed the flagship Reverse Pitching bringing together MSMEs, ecosystem players, prospective clients, and investors with GEPA as host institution. This B2B networking platform tackled MSME visibility and market access, enabling client-driven solution design and sparking new commercial linkages attracting strong institutional participation from organizations such as German and the France Chamber of Commerce, Mastercard Foundation and GIZ.
Paulina serves as the Cluster Lead for Entrepreneurship and Employment at the World Bank's Ghana Youth Voices, a youth-led community championing youth perspectives in the Bank's programmatic areas. In this capacity, she conceived and facilitated youth-centred events such as the End Poverty Day bringing together policy advisors at the World Bank to discuss Ghana's macroeconomic framework, engaging in industry discussions on the demand and supply side dynamics of youth employment opportunities. A key highlight was her use of design thinking methodologies to unpack youth's interests, priorities, and challenges on employment and entrepreneurship.
Paulina holds an MA in Economic Policy Management from the University of Ghana, certification in Professional Consulting from the Chartered Management Institute, UK and diploma courses such as Introduction to Behavioural Science in Public Policy by the World Bank Institute, Human Centered Design, and Social Impact Analysis.
