About Us
We produce audio documentaries broadcast on English and German public radio. We also undertake investigations for corporate clients. These two activities are very different from each other yet for us they go hand-in-hand. Both require rigorous research. Both require careful reporting. The results are insightful, comprehensible and engaging.
Our investigations consist mostly of interviewing people with insider knowledge. The subjects are usually individuals or organization located anywhere in the world. But the investigations can also be about markets, policies and perceptions. We pride ourselves in being able to work quickly in specialized fields that have included international finance, energy, biotech, the auto industry, aviation and farming. Our reporting is always clear with careful footnoting. We get our clients results in just a matter of days.
Our radio documentaries, on the other hand, take time. For the last two years we have been working out of Ghana, preparing a documentary radio series called Invisible Governance. The European Journalism Center provided generous support for us to produce our first hour-long documentary in German for WDR Radio5, which aired in December 2019. But this is just the beginning. Our goal is to tell the extraordinary story of Ghana’s rich and diverse spiritual life and its influences over people and politics.
Believe it or not, our recordings include interactions with spiritual beings and their priests. We are not pushing any particular belief system. We are documenting what we hear and its effects.
Once we have created pilots for the radio series, we will be looking for radio and podcast outlets.
Hechtech House is located in Osu, Accra’s funky downtown. It includes a sound studio and office and an events space for concerts, conferences and crazy parties. We also rent out one self contained studio apartment and two guest rooms
The Team

David Hecht
Director
I co-authored a book in the early 1990s called ‘Invisible Governance: The Art of African Micro Politics’. Now I’m in Accra to fulfill a dream of producing Invisible Governance the radio series. I was born in Australia, grew up in New York and lived all around Africa where I worked as a news correspondent and UN official. I started making radio documentaries in the mid 1990s in Senegal when I was a BBC and NPR correspondent. In 2009, I moved to Berlin and started making documentaries for German public radio. At the same time I started working as an investigator for risk consultancy firms. I have been based in Ghana since 2018 .

Samuel Okoe
Assistant Radio Producer
My title is assistant radio producer at Hechtech but my duties don’t end there. Apart from working on content creation for radio and marketing our works, I also write up interviews and reports for the investigative work. As if that’s not enough, I am also Hechtech’s tech support guy. It’s very consuming but I enjoy it and I’m learning a lot. I attained a HND in Marketing at Accra Technical University in 2017. I had previously worked for Telefonika Ghana Ltd as a Corporate Sales Representative.

Shadrach Davies Anane
Assistant Watchman
My responsibilities include i guarding Hechtech house and reporting all security related problems that arise. I was born and raised just a couple of houses away on the same street as Hechtech. I attended Ghanatta College and was formerly employed at the computer company RLG Ghana.

Gertrude Hanson
Office Admin & Investigator
I am the administrator at Hechtech, making sure the office is running smoothly. Luckily, I enjoy endless problems, otherwise I’d have quit long ago. I started at Hechtech in 2019 as a researcher. I have become skilled at finding people for David to interview for our investigations and I am good at writing up the interviews in reports. I attained a degree in Theatre Arts at the University of Ghana in 2016 and previously worked as the district coordinator for the online shopping platform e-Connect Global Africa from 2017 to 2018

Esther Adjei
House Administrator
I am responsible for keeping Hechtech House spick and span. That makes me the housekeeper, but at times I also organize and solve problems as if I were a manager. Previously I was a caterer, working at the printing company Camelot Ghana Ltd.

Mr. Cat (Samuel Otoo Arthur)
Head of Security
I am head night guard, keeping Hechtech House safe and secure. I live around the corner and was born and raised in Osu so I know pretty well everyone in the neighborhood. I was previously a security officer at various companies, including Stanchart Bank
Data protection
- Everyone on the Hechtech team is told not to share information about our clients, subjects and sources
- Everyone who works on the team must sign a non-disclosure agreement
- No information we collect for clients is shared with anyone else
- If a source requests anonymity, we ensure that no one besides the team learns their identity, including the client
- Our server is as secure as it can possibly be
- Our staff may not use their personal email addresses for work (unless our work email goes down).
- When employees stop working for Hechtech, we delete their work email accounts
- We never deliberately use information we collect to harm to any organization or individual
- We would never break the law unless we had a very good reason to do so
- Our moral conscience is stronger than our desire for money