Data analysis program in Python / SciPy / Numpy

I need help with Python. I am trying to write a Python program to do some analysis for an article on statistical game theory. It's not very hard, just need to solve a recursive problem on a 2-dimensional grid and and I have prototype code in VBA. But my code is slow and I need to speed it up. However, I am a novice in Python and would like some help translating my VBA into Python. You would need to find a good convex optimization package in Python (SciPy?) that has similar functionality as the Excel Solver which I currently use. I am in London, but we could speak on Skype. Let me know if you are available.