Alumnus Kenneth Asiedu Invests in Merrick

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  The Asiedus' pledge will support an endowed Entrepreneurship Fund. The purpose of the fund will be to provide endowed support for operating expenses of the center in the Merrick School of Business.

   

  Kenneth Asiedu is the president of Intercom Data Networks. He escaped the poverty of his homeland, Ghana, by immigrating to the United States after he graduated from the University of Ghana in 1990. He went on to earn his master's degree in finance from the University of Baltimore in 1992, soon finding opportunities at Signet Bank and Legg Mason before moving on to AT&T.

   

  Working in IT, Asiedu recognized that access to telecommunication and computers was an essential part of helping to defeat poverty. In 1998, he left AT&T, and, together with his partner Francis Quartey, founded IDN in Harford County as a way to market less-expensive Internet telephony (broadband) services to clients in international markets, including Europe, Australia, and Africa (in particular Nigeria and Ghana).

   

  IDN's philanthropic mission began with a plan to network a group of schools in Ghana, and thus introduce hundreds of impoverished teenagers to the world via the Internet. The schools targeted by the company often have no phone lines or electricity, but Asiedu reports that IDN has already reached about 5,000 students. This kind of individualized connection would normally run $75 a month; IDN eventually cut it to less than $10 a month.

   

  Asiedu also owns Asiedu & Associates, an accounting firm in the Philadelphia area with five offices and five more planned for the next year. IDN posted revenues of about $8 million in 2006 and is now looking to expand its markets, all with an altruistic point of view. Its business plan is to find other markets in different regions, using Wi-Fi as its key tool.

   

  Kenneth Asiedu won the 2007 Business Innovator Award from the University of Baltimore and is a member of the EOC's advisory board.