MicroStrategy Partners is an Africa-focused advisory practice founded by Ermias Eshetu one of the continent's foremost institutional architects. We advise governments, DFIs, private sector leaders, and high-net-worth families on financial sector development, board governance, market entry, and wealth strategy across Africa's frontier and emerging markets.
"I build financial institutions that last and markets that work for people who have never had access to them before."
MicroStrategy Partners is the advisory practice of Ermias Eshetu engineer, financier, and institutional architect with over 25 years of executive leadership across Africa and Europe. Ermias founded and led FSD Ethiopia, transformed the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange into Africa's first national electronic trading platform, and serves today as Advisory Board Chairman of Safaricom Telecommunications Ethiopia PLC and Chairman of Zemen Bank S.C.
Before returning to Ethiopia, Ermias held technology and strategy roles at IBM, Alcatel, Orange, and MicroStrategy in the United Kingdom and Europe building the engineering and analytical rigour that underpins everything MicroStrategy Partners does. His MSc in International Business from Manchester Business School and BSc in Computation from UMIST give him a rare combination of financial and technical fluency that most advisors in this space simply do not have.
MicroStrategy Partners is not a large firm. It is a principal-led practice where every engagement is led personally by Ermias bringing the full weight of his operating experience, relationships, and judgment to bear on your specific challenge.
Work with ErmiasEach service area reflects a domain where Ermias has not just advised but built, governed, or transformed institutions at the highest level.
The experience that underpins MicroStrategy Partners is not a portfolio of advisory engagements. It is a career of institutional building, market transformation, and governance leadership at scale, in Africa's most complex markets.
Most advisory firms arrive with frameworks built from observing other people's markets. MicroStrategy Partners arrives with something different: three decades of accumulated knowledge from building, breaking, and fixing institutions in real conditions in one of Africa's largest, most complex, and most consequential economies.
This is knowledge that cannot be replicated by reading reports, attending conferences, or modelling spreadsheets. It comes from being in the room when the regulator says no, when the board splinters, when the platform goes live and the farmers don't come, and knowing from experience what to do next.
Four principles form the intellectual foundation of every MicroStrategy Partners engagement:
Apply this to your challengeMicroStrategy Partners is not trying to become a large firm. It is trying to become the most trusted one the practice that Africa's most consequential institutions and families turn to when the decision genuinely matters.
"We are building the advisory practice that Africa's financial future deserves one that holds institutions to the highest governance standards, helps families build wealth that endures across generations, and connects the continent's markets to the global capital they need to grow."
Ermias Eshetu · Founder, MicroStrategy PartnersMicroStrategy Partners engages with a small number of clients at any one time. If you are a DFI, multilateral, investor, financial institution, FinTech, or family seeking senior advisory on Africa market strategy, governance, family office setup, or institutional transformation we welcome the conversation.
Engagements typically begin with a no-obligation introductory call. Use the form or reach out directly.