Dr. Samuel Nkansah – The Story

Samah Holdings was founded by Dr. Samuel Nkansah, a pharmacist and entrepreneur. Samuel spent the last 27 years working with GlaxoSmithKline, the UK multinational pharmaceutical conglomerate, starting as a medical representative and progressing with increasing levels of responsibility to country and Anglophone west Africa business management. He exited as the Lead, Government Affairs West Africa.

The last seven years was spent in rolling out business initiatives in the whole region interacting with relevant stakeholders whose roles are key to the sustainability of their business. Equally he drove a robust government affairs capability leveraging on his rich experiences to articulate the company’s position on relevant governments’ policies as well as participated in discussions to influence the ultimate outcomes of these policies. He also identified and built a sustainable relationship with key customers within the West/Central Africa Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) leading to the introduction and management of new vaccines into the EPI on the behalf of GSK with major focus on strategies and tactics to achieve successful uptake of these vaccines.

All the Anglophone West Africa countries (excluding Nigeria) introduced Rotarix as their choice of rotavirus vaccine. Additionally, he developed the appropriate framework for the generation of intelligence as it relates to government policies for informed management decisions as well as evolved mechanisms for mitigation of potential adverse outcomes of such policies. Commercially, he believes that the success of every business depends on having competent staff endowed with power to take decisions promptly.