How a Ghana-based HR Project Manager led HR Policy Reform across Sub Saharan Africa

By Ugo Aliogo

Change is rarely a straight line. It is a series of pushes and pulls, breakthroughs and setbacks. At the British Council’s HR operations across Sub Saharan Africa, 2018 was a year when quiet progress gave way to tangible momentum, much of it guided by Derrick Afriyie’s data-driven vision and steady leadership.

The transformation Afriyie began in 2017, introducing a service-level agreement (SLA) dashboard and improving operational efficiency, was no longer an experiment. It was becoming embedded into daily work. HR teams from Accra to Nairobi no longer waited passively for quarterly reports or audits. Instead, they tracked their own progress in real time, with clear data showing how quickly queries were resolved and where bottlenecks remained.

This shift toward agility was more than just operational improvement; it was cultural. The British Council’s HR team were growing into new roles as data-informed managers, empowered to take ownership and make decisions based on evidence. Afriyie’s leadership had nurtured this transition carefully, emphasising that tools without trust would not last.

Beyond dashboards, 2018 saw Afriyie lead a series of broader digital initiatives aimed at transforming the HR experience across the region. A key highlight was the launch of a cloud-based HR self-service portal across Sub Saharan Africa. For the first time, employees could submit leave requests, update personal information, and track their cases online without waiting days for email replies or paper forms.

This portal was more than a digital convenience. It symbolised a fundamental shift in how the British Council approached its workforce, moving from a reactive, paper-based system to a proactive, user-centered service. Staff engagement increased as employees felt more control over their work lives, reducing frustration and building confidence in HR’s responsiveness.

Afriyie also piloted an HR chatbot functionality, a new experiment in automating routine inquiries and freeing up time for HR advisors to focus on more complex issues. By the end of 2018, this chatbot had already started reducing inquiry resolution times by about 30 percent, a significant improvement in employee experience.

Behind the scenes, Afriyie did not just drive the implementation of digital tools; he forged connections across functions and regions. Partnering closely with IT and finance teams, he helped integrate workforce data with budgeting systems, ensuring HR metrics aligned with financial realities. This integration was critical for planning and governance, giving the Council a more holistic view of its resources and risks.
Compliance remained a major focus. Afriyie’s efforts to standardise HR documentation and contract management expanded, reducing audit findings significantly. In 2018, the British Council Africa region reported a 90 percent decrease in payroll and personnel record audit issues, a testament to stronger data governance and process discipline.

Leadership development and talent pipeline initiatives gained new traction as well. Afriyie extended frameworks for identifying leadership potential and succession planning across multiple countries, addressing critical gaps in regional capacity. These efforts were especially important for a workforce dispersed across diverse cultures and legal frameworks, requiring tailored approaches that balanced global standards with local realities.

The British Council’s wider strategic priorities provided fertile ground for Afriyie’s work. The 2017–18 Annual Report showed digital engagement rising sharply, with 222 million online interactions, up from 174 million the previous year. Afriyie’s HR digital transformation was a key enabler of this momentum, making the workforce itself more agile and connected.
Yet Afriyie’s focus was never just on technology. He understood deeply that digital transformation without people changing is incomplete. Throughout 2018, he led extensive training programs, equipping over 300+ employees in the region, on how to apply the novel HR tools confidently. These sessions were hands-on and iterative, incorporating user feedback to refine tools and processes.

Communication also played a vital role. Afriyie championed transparency around policy changes, using newsletters, internal forums, and workshops to ensure employees felt informed and involved. This helped reduce resistance and built a foundation of trust, vital in organisations undergoing rapid change.

Governance and strategic alignment improved markedly in 2018. Afriyie established regional HR governance frameworks that supported the review of the Sub-Saharan Africa employee handbook, updating outdated policies and ensuring provisions set out in the handbook were legally compliance and aligned to regional terms and conditions. As regional project manager for the Reward Review Project, his work enhanced the reward and benefits structure across the 20 African countries, striking a balance between labor market consistency and positioning the British Council as an employer of choice.

The integration of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) metrics into HR reporting was another notable achievement. Afriyie consolidated DEI data across multiple countries, giving leadership a clearer picture of gender representation and inclusive hiring trends. This data informed long term representation goals to increase female leadership and persons with disabilities within the workforce, aligning with the British Council’s global commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.

By the end of 2018, the picture was clear. Afriyie had moved the British Council’s HR function from incremental improvements to systemic transformation. The tools and processes introduced earlier had matured, becoming embedded in daily operations.

The workforce was more digitally empowered, and leadership had better insight into talent and compliance risks.
The change had not been dramatic or headline-grabbing, but it was effective. With Afriyie at the helm, British Council HR in Africa was evolving into a digitally fluent and data-driven engine, more responsive, agile, and aligned with the organization’s strategic goals.
Looking ahead, the foundation was solid. The momentum Afriyie built in 2018 set the stage for broader regional HR modernization and deeper use of predictive analytics. The journey was ongoing, but the direction was clear: transformation grounded in data, trust, and people-centered design.
For an organisation navigating the complexities of culture, geography, and compliance, Afriyie’s steady hand was proving invaluable. His vision of technology as “a tool for empowerment not disruption” was reshaping not just processes, but the very core of how effective organisations operate, a subtle revolution advancing one data point at a time.