Tokenisation: The Boardroom Decision Framework

Understand the proposition. Challenge the evidence. Make a defensible decision.

Your board will soon be asked to approve, sell, hold or invest in a tokenised asset. You do not need to understand blockchain code to make that decision well. You need to know what is being proposed, what the customer is being promised and what happens when something goes wrong.

This 19 page workbook gives boards a clear, tested way to do that. It follows one example from start to finish: a US$10 million commercial building in Accra, divided into 10,000 investment units, each represented by a digital token. Whenever a question feels abstract, you come back to the building.

Who it is for

Board chairs, non-executive directors, CEOs, and the leaders of risk, audit and technology committees in banks, insurers, pension funds, fund managers, fintechs and regulators.

What is inside

The five tests every tokenisation proposal must pass:

The business case: what does tokenisation do better than the best conventional alternative, after all costs and risks?
The customer's rights: can we explain, in plain language, what the customer owns, what they can claim and against whom?
Risk and recovery: if a system or provider fails tomorrow, can we protect customers, establish who owns what and recover?
Governing capability: do we have the competence, assurance and accountability to challenge and oversee this?
The decision: what evidence justifies proceeding, what limits apply and what makes us stop?

Also included:

Five board worksheets with a simple Strong, Partial or Missing rating, so you record the evidence you saw, not the assurances you heard
Red flags for each test
The evidence pack a board should see before approval, and the difference between a controlled pilot and a full launch
Stop triggers to agree before launch, with who decides and how fast
A guide for pension trustees, fund managers and insurers who are asked to buy tokens rather than issue them, with its own worksheet
A map of virtual asset regulation across nine African markets, including Ghana's Virtual Asset Service Providers Act, 2025, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Mauritius, Rwanda, Botswana, Namibia and Morocco (position as of November 2026)
Three practice cases with model answers for board training: a Treasury bill app, a cashew export deal and gold backed tokens
A plain language glossary

How to use it

Share the five tests with management before the board paper is written. Work through the worksheets at the meeting. Return to Test 5 every quarter after launch.

About the author

Ethel D. Cofie is a Non-Executive Director of Old Mutual Ghana, where she chairs the Technology, Innovation and Platform Committee, and an Independent Non-Executive Director of G-Money, where she chairs the Platforms Committee. She helped deploy mobile money at Vodafone Ghana and contributed to the tokenisation discussion at the Africa Virtual Asset Summit 2026, convened by SEC Ghana. She is the founder of EDEL Technology Consulting and curates the Future of Finance Dialogues (Africa).

Institutional licence: 10 users

This purchase grants one named institution a non exclusive, non transferable licence to use this edition for its own governance, assessment and internal learning. The institution may share digital or printed copies with up to 10 users drawn from its directors, employees and committee members, who may complete and reuse the worksheets for the institution's own work. The workbook may not be resold, publicly uploaded, shared outside the licensed institution or used to deliver external training or consultancy without prior written permission. Separate institutions, including affiliated companies, need separate licences. Updates, advisory services, training and support are not included.

For more than 10 users, several institutions or a board training session, contact ethelcofie.com.

Format: PDF, A4, 19 pages. Published November 2026.

This workbook provides general educational guidance. It is not legal, regulatory, tax or investment advice.

Ethel Cofie