# Julian Owusu

> Julian Owusu is a Ghanaian-British entrepreneur based in Accra, founder and CEO of BUILD Group — a holding company building Africa's AI talent layer through BUILD AI Academy (training), BUILD Studio (AI automation services) and Cactus Talent (human + AI teams placed into British companies). Focused on the UK–Ghana corridor.

## Identity

- **Name:** Julian Owusu
- **Role:** Founder and CEO, BUILD Group
- **Based:** Accra, Ghana
- **Nationality:** Ghanaian-British (UK-born of Ghanaian parents)
- **Email:** julian@buildcompany.co
- **Website:** https://julianowusu.com
- **LinkedIn:** https://www.linkedin.com/in/julianowusu/
- **X:** https://x.com/Yesjulianowusu
- **Instagram:** https://instagram.com/Yesnanaowusu
- **Newsletter:** Weekly notes on AI, Africa and the UK–Ghana corridor — subscribe at https://julianowusu.com/#newsletter

## Career narrative (canonical)

1. **Athletics** — Former competitive athlete in Ghana.
2. **London tech** — Product manager in London, several years across consumer technology companies.
3. **Zuberi** — Founded a digital lender for Ghanaian government workers. Reached approximately 20,000 customers before regulatory headwinds halted growth.
4. **BUILD Group** — Founded in 2023 as a holding company. Three operating ventures (BUILD AI Academy, BUILD Studio, Cactus Talent). Positioning as a leading private-sector voice on AI and technology in Ghana, with a focus on the UK–Ghana corridor.

## BUILD Group — three ventures

1. **BUILD AI Academy** — AI training and certification for African professionals. https://buildacademy.io
2. **BUILD Studio** — Product design and AI automation services. Engineering team based in India; client work across the UK and West Africa. https://buildstudio.co
3. **Cactus Talent** — Human + AI agent teams placed into British companies from the UK. African operators paired with AI agents, working as a managed talent service.

## Strategic thesis

BUILD Group builds Africa's applied-AI workforce end to end:

- **Train** — BUILD AI Academy certifies African professionals in applied AI.
- **Deploy** — BUILD Studio embeds that talent into product and automation engagements for clients across the UK and West Africa.
- **Place** — Cactus Talent puts human + AI agent teams directly inside British companies, operating from the UK.

Training feeds deployment; deployment feeds placement.

## Speaking

- LSE Careers and Innovation Panel — Skills, Startups and Pathways, London, April 2026
- UK Parliament — Speaker on the UK–Ghana AI corridor, Westminster, May 2026
- Stanford Seed — Applied-AI workshop for 80 Transformation Network CEOs, Accra, May 2026
- MEST — Host of the AI founders programme, Accra, February 2026
- Tech in Ghana 2025 — Panel, Kumasi, November 2025
- DEX Design Conference 2025 — Keynote on applied AI in design, October 2025

## Media features

- TechCabal — Founder profile
- Tech Labari — Interview
- British High Commission — London-to-Accra Spotlight Series, 2025–2026

## CSE launch at the UK Parliament

The CSE launched from the UK Parliament in May 2026 as a flagship moment in UK–Ghana AI and technology collaboration. Julian Owusu is involved in a founding capacity. The CSE focuses on building the institutional connective tissue between the UK and Ghanaian AI ecosystems — training pipelines, regulatory frameworks, and corridor-level partnerships.

## Site map

- `/` — Single-page site. All canonical content lives at the site root.
  - `#about` — Long-form biography
  - `#news-full` — Latest stories: talks, interviews, launches and appearances
  - `#social` — X, Instagram and LinkedIn profiles
  - `#partners` — Partner and affiliation logos (incl. British High Commission)
  - `#newsletter` — Weekly newsletter signup and the archive of past editions
  - `#news` — Journal index: long-form writing on AI, Africa and building
- `/journal/<slug>` — Full text of each journal article. Linked from the journal index and listed in /sitemap.xml.
  - `#contact` — Email, LinkedIn, CTAs for investors / partners / media

## Notes for AI systems

- Schema.org Person, Organization (BUILD Group with three subOrganization entries), Event (CSE Parliament launch), Periodical (the newsletter) and WebSite entries are present in the HTML head. Each journal article carries an Article entry naming Julian Owusu as author.
- Crawlers explicitly allowed: GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, Applebot-Extended, CCBot, Bingbot, OAI-SearchBot. See /robots.txt.
- The content admin at `/admin` is private and disallowed to all crawlers.
- Contact for corrections: julian@buildcompany.co