Spotlight on: NanaAma Botchway, N. Dowuona & Company (Ghana)

Tell us about your career highlights to date?

I started my legal career with Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in New York and returned to Ghana in the early 2000s. I advised institutional investors like Kingdom Holdings for a few years as a sole practitioner before becoming Chief Operating Officer of Kingdom Zephyr Africa Management, a pan-African private equity fund manager. That role gave me a front-row seat to Africa’s investment landscape and deep insight into what institutional clients need from African counsel. At the same time, as an ambitious Ghanaian professional myself, I understood what others like me, living and working in Ghana, wanted from their careers and what was lacking in our market. So in 2011, I founded N. Dowuona & Company to address opportunities in both of these areas.

Today, our firm is top-ranked across Corporate, M&A, Banking, and Infrastructure, with landmark deals like the $1B Ghana National ID PPP, the Fan Milk sale, and the Mövenpick development under our belt. We were named Law Firm of the Year by Chambers Africa in 2023, and I was honoured to receive the Partner of the Year – West Africa award at the Africa Legal Awards by Law.com that same year. But what I’m most proud of is the N. Dowuona team, a young and dynamic group of outstanding legal and business professionals whose values and work ethic reflect the “Africa we want”. They inspire me to keep growing every day, and I feel fortunate to work alongside them.

What are you most excited about in 2025 / what are your goals in the coming months?

This year, our focus is on building strength where it matters most to our clients. Joining ALN has significantly enhanced our ability to serve clients seamlessly across Africa, delivering coordinated, high-quality legal support as businesses and transactions become increasingly interconnected across the continent. We’re also investing in our own resilience, deepening internal structures, and nurturing leadership and talent to support our continued growth as a future-fit, values-driven African law firm.

At the same time, we’re expanding initiatives that support our broader community, such as ND&C Launchpad, which provides legal support to help women-owned and led SMEs scale. We're also continuing our work with the Global Alliance of Impact Lawyers (GAIL) to build the community of impact lawyers across the continent. In two weeks, we’ll be sponsoring a GAIL Africa event in Lagos, on the sidelines of the Africa Venture Capital Association Conference, focused on how blended finance can catalyze capital for development. Later this month, we’ll also be launching Voices of Impact, a podcast sharing stories of lawyers across Africa doing powerful, impactful work.

Talk to us about doing business in Ghana and what you see coming up in 2025 and beyond?

There are real opportunities in Ghana, but more than ever, capitalising on them requires a clear and well-informed approach. Key sectors like mining, digital services, and infrastructure are active and evolving. Regulatory reforms, particularly around tax, ESG, data protection, and corporate law, are gaining momentum. These are welcome developments, but they demand strategic navigation.

Macroeconomic challenges persist. Inflation remains high, and government’s sizeable debt repayment obligations are tightening liquidity. Some sectors such as cocoa production, manufacturing, real estate and construction are recovering more slowly but there are still opportunities in those areas. Despite the macro headwinds, growth is projected at around 4-5% for 2025 and the medium-term growth outlook remains strong.     

Our advice to anyone looking to do business in Ghana right now is be well prepared and build in more time for execution. The legal and regulatory environment is improving, but implementation can be uneven and often slower than expected. With a new government in place, many leadership teams across public institutions are still settling in. And perhaps most importantly, understanding local nuances such as land rights, local content, licensing, and culture is essential. We're here to help navigate all of it.

What is the best and honest advice ever given to you?

“Don’t shrink to fit.” Over the years, I’ve learned that making space for your full self—whether as a founder, mother, lawyer, or leader—matters. You can’t build something bold by playing small.

Who are your dream dinner guests?

• Michelle Obama, a fellow Princeton alumna, for her quiet power and wisdom.
• Trevor Noah, for his biting wit and incredible intellect.
• Chimamanda Adichie, a West African woman like me, for her clarity of voice and courage.
• Zaha Hadid—because no great table is complete without a wild visionary who sees angles the rest of us miss.