TechQuest has confirmed Erica Afrihyia as one of the judges for the TechQuest Innovation Award and Hackathon 2023. It is a significant appointment for a platform that continues to position itself at the center of Africa’s growing innovation culture. The TechQuest judging panel is built to represent people who understand real problems, real systems, and real users. This is why her inclusion matters. Erica brings a blend of customer experience insight, financial services understanding, and public health focused analytics. Her career reflects a consistent effort to improve systems that affect everyday people, which aligns with the practical and impact driven spirit that TechQuest champions.
She enters the 2023 panel as a strategist shaped by work that sits at the intersection of customer experience, data insight, and social impact. Her journey up to 2022 shows a professional who cares deeply about how systems treat people, how decisions are made, and how evidence can be used to improve outcomes. With that background, she joins the panel as a voice that understands both service structures and community level challenges. Her appointment strengthens TechQuest’s commitment to evaluating solutions through a lens that is both analytical and grounded in lived realities across Africa.
Erica’s foundation in Business Administration and Accounting gave her the structure and discipline with which she entered Ghana’s financial services sector. She built her early career in environments where accuracy, trust, and client understanding are central to successful service. Those years were important, not simply for the technical knowledge they provided, but for how they sharpened her instinct for listening to customers and translating their concerns into meaningful internal action.
Her frontline role at Consolidated Bank Ghana stands out as one of the strongest influences on her approach to innovation. This was a space where she worked directly with clients on products, advisory support, issue resolution, and general customer education. Each conversation revealed something about how people navigate financial decisions, what they understand, and where they struggle. She developed a grasp of both the numbers and the human experiences that surround them. It shaped how she sees financial systems, and it strengthened her belief that solutions must not only work technically but must also be usable, accessible, and trustworthy.
In many ways, this period grounded her in the reality of service design. She learned how small process gaps create big customer challenges. She learned how poor communication can erase the value of an otherwise strong product. She learned how internal teams often see different parts of the same problem, and how customer experience improves only when those perspectives come together. These insights have stayed with her and now form part of what she brings to the TechQuest judging table.
Her transition to Enterprise Life Insurance introduced a new level of leadership responsibility. As Customer Service Manager, she coordinated operations, supervised benefits processing, and ensured that service standards were upheld across a busy, customer facing environment. It was here that she demonstrated her ability to redesign processes, manage teams, and raise performance with measurable results. Her work did not simply tweak existing routines. It created real change. Customer waiting times were reduced by about seventy percent, a result that signals the depth of her process redesign and operational thinking.
She approached the role with the mindset that service should feel simple for customers, even if the internal work behind it is complex. She led teams in ways that protected retention and maintained trust, even during periods of operational strain. She strengthened coordination across departments and supported workflows that allowed customers to feel seen and respected. These achievements provide clear evidence of a leader who understands how to convert insight into practical solutions, and who is willing to rethink established routines when necessary.
Her curiosity did not allow her to remain in one industry. She began exploring healthcare management and public health, guided by an interest in how data can influence decisions that affect large populations. This widened her scope and introduced her to predictive analytics, planning tools, and community level insight structures. She contributed to projects that applied data to health focused planning, and her growing voice in the space drew attention from media platforms such as TechBullion, Daily Trust, and Independent. These features positioned her as an emerging contributor to data driven public health thinking in Ghana.
By 2022, Erica had evolved from a frontline service professional into someone who was actively shaping conversations about public health, innovation, and evidence based systems. Her work reflected a commitment to environments where people are treated with dignity, where decisions are informed by insight rather than assumption, and where data is used to improve lives.
Achievement Highlights and the Depth Behind the Results
The seventy percent reduction in waiting times at Enterprise Life Insurance is a central reference point in understanding her capability. Such a reduction is not the product of simple changes. It requires a deep understanding of bottlenecks, user journeys, and internal coordination. It suggests that she applied structured thinking, built buy in across teams, and approached service from the point of view of both customers and staff. This outcome is exactly the kind of practical, scalable improvement that TechQuest encourages.
Her work with customer complaints, financial decision support, and client education in the banking sector provides another layer of insight. She treated customer challenges as signals that could guide better processes. She learned to listen for patterns, especially in the kinds of issues that repeat. She worked across departments, bringing feedback from the frontline into conversations with operations and credit teams. This skill in connecting daily interactions with system level change is valuable in judging innovation because it allows her to quickly see whether a proposed solution addresses the real root of a problem.
Her contributions to public health and data driven planning highlight a different dimension of her impact. She has seen how data can reveal community vulnerabilities that are not always visible in traditional reporting. She has worked with insights that help shape planning and decision making. Media coverage of her work affirms its relevance and shows that her ideas resonate beyond industry circles. This ability to combine data with human context is important for evaluating public health focused or community focused projects in the TechQuest Hackathon.
Together, these achievements create a profile of someone who sees systems from multiple angles and understands how innovation must balance operational detail with human experience.
Why She Is a Strong Judge for TechQuest 2023
The 2023 edition of the TechQuest Innovation Award and Hackathon covers a wide range of solution areas. Erica is well positioned to evaluate projects in three key categories
Customer Experience and Service Delivery Innovation
Her leadership at Enterprise Life Insurance provides a clear foundation for this role. She oversaw service operations, coordinated teams, supervised benefits processing, and enforced standards that shaped customer satisfaction. The process redesign that cut waiting times by about seventy percent is a practical example of innovation that works. These outcomes are precisely the kind of impact TechQuest looks for in submissions focused on customer experience, workflow efficiency, and service improvement.
She brings a clear understanding of both operational detail and the emotional experience of customers. She can assess whether a proposed solution will actually reduce friction, whether the workflow makes sense for the user, or whether the design solves a genuine service delivery challenge.
Financial Access and Consumer Support Solutions
Her banking experience equips her to judge solutions that help people navigate financial systems more confidently. She worked directly with customers seeking advice, clarity, and support. She handled complaints that revealed structural weaknesses. She collaborated with credit and operations teams, which means she understands the behind the scenes mechanics of financial products.
This allows her to evaluate consumer banking tools, financial literacy platforms, and microfinance access solutions with both technical awareness and human sensitivity. She can identify whether a solution truly empowers the user or simply adds more complexity. She can also assess whether it addresses the trust gaps that often exist in financial services.
Public Health Awareness and Data Insight Projects
Her work in public health, predictive analytics, and data driven planning provides strong alignment with this category. She has been part of conversations that use data to understand community needs. She has contributed to studies that inform planning. Media platforms have recognised her role in shaping these insights.
This background positions her to evaluate projects that aim to improve health awareness, develop basic digital health tools, or support community level data work. She is able to see whether the insight behind a solution is sound, whether the problem framing is accurate, and whether the proposed tools have the potential to influence real community outcomes.
Positioning Her Work Within the African Innovation Landscape
Erica’s professional path reflects a broader shift occurring across Africa’s service, finance, and health sectors. Organisations are beginning to recognise that innovation is not only about technology. It is also about the human experience within systems, the clarity of communication, the flow of information, and the ability to use data effectively.
Her media visibility between TechBullion, Daily Trust, and Independent underscores the relevance of her work. She represents a new generation of professionals who combine business understanding with public health sensitivity. This blend is increasingly important in a continent where service quality, financial access, and community health are interconnected issues.
Her appointment to the TechQuest judging panel signals the platform’s commitment to evaluators who understand these intersections. She brings a grounded voice, shaped by real interactions with customers, operational teams, and community level insights. Her presence strengthens the panel’s ability to judge solutions not only on their technical merit but on their impact on everyday life.
Erica Afrihyia joins the 2023 judging committee with practical experience, strategic clarity, and a deep commitment to systems that treat people with dignity. She understands complexity, yet consistently works to simplify user journeys. She understands data, yet always connects it to human outcomes. She understands service, yet sees innovation as something that must evolve with community needs.
For innovators preparing to submit their entries, her presence on the panel is a reminder that TechQuest values solutions grounded in real problems and measurable impact. The 2023 edition promises to be a strong year, and her perspective will help ensure that the most thoughtful, useful, and socially relevant innovations rise to the top.
TechQuest welcomes her to the judging panel and looks forward to the insight she will bring to the Innovation Award and Hackathon 2023.
