Private sector development adviser with very strong team management skills. Excellent understanding of trade and regional integration issues, and a very strong regional network. Substantial experience in oil, gas, mining and good understanding of climate change and gender.
department: The Board
Frannie is the Senior Partner and CEO SouthBridge Investments, an investment firm that works across Africa, and has held senior positions at the World Bank and the African Development Bank.
Frannie is a highly experienced and well-known finance and development expert, with long-standing global experience leading and transforming organisations in the private, public and non-for-profit spheres. She has held various leadership roles at The Trade and Development Bank (TDB) Group, including Vice Chair of the Board, Special Advisor to the President before becoming TDBs first Chief Operating Officer. She also led the Asset Management business of TDB, including the recent launch of a unique product for trade finance in Africa.
She graduated from the Massachusetts Institute for Technology (MIT) with both a Masters of Science in Transportation and a PhD in Infrastructure Systems. She went on to work at the World Bank Group (WBG), where during her 15-year career she held senior financial positions across the Group. Frannie served as Vice-President for nearly seven years of her tenure at the WBG. She was also Senior Vice President at the African Development Bank (AfDB).
She has also founded two companies:
- The Fezembat Group, which was dedicated to providing risk management and support through advisory services to top leadership of companies investing in mining, infrastructure and energy in developing and emerging markets; and,
- Mkoba Private Equity Fund, which was founded to invest in small and medium-size enterprises in Africa in response to the emerging market opportunities in Sub-Saharan Africa.
In addition to her extensive career, Frannie holds advisory and governance roles on several boards, including the UN Foundation, OCP Group, Orca Explorations, AZA Finance, and ARC (African Risk Capacity) Ltd. She is also a member of the World Economic Forums (WEF) Regional Advisory Group for Africa and has previously served as co-Chair for the Global Agenda Councils of the WEF. Other advisory and board roles she has held include with MIT, African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), Institute for Security Studies (ISS), King Badouin Foundation US (KBFUS), and Nelson Mandela Institute for Science and Technology (NM-AIST).
She is skilled in Development Finance, Sustainable Development and Climate, Strategic and Analytical Skills, Investing in Emerging Markets, International Business, International Relations, and Management.
Arunma is a scholar and a member of the Global Leadership Council of Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. She is also the Chairperson of Veritas Asset Management, a U.K. asset manager and sits on corporate boards such as the Afreximbank Pan-African Payment System and Settlements Initiative. She is a member of the London Stock Exchange Africa Advisory Group.
Before joining the University of Oxford, she was Treasurer and Vice President of the World Bank and before that, Director General of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Nigeria.
She previously held several senior leadership positions at the African Development Bank (AfDB), including Group Treasurer and Group Vice President, Corporate Services. Arunma commenced her career in 1984, as a Lecturer of Computer Science at the University of Benin and has held several important positions in consulting, capital markets, finance, and research.
During her time as Director General SEC Nigeria, she led the rebuilding of the Nigerian capital markets after the global financial crisis. She was also a member of Nigeria’s Economic Management Team, chaired by the President of Nigeria. She also served on the Board of the International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) and chaired the Africa Middle East Regional Committee, during the same period.
As Treasurer of the World Bank, she led a global team that managed $200 billion multi-product asset portfolios for the World Bank Group, 65 central banks and other official institutions. They also raised over US$50 billion from the global capital markets, annually, for the World Bank’s lending activities. During this time, she led several ground-breaking green finance and thematic transactions and oversaw an
extensive public sector financial advisory business that covered debt management, risk management and green finance.
Arunma Oteh graduated from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka in 1984 with a first-class honours degree in Computer Science. She received an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1990 and holds honorary doctorate degrees. She has received several awards, notably Nigeria’s Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON) in 2011, Power List’s 2020 top 100 people in the U.K. of African heritage and Forbes Africa’s 50 most influential African women in March 2020. She is the co-editor of the book African Voices African Visions, the Chairperson of the 120-year-old Royal African Society and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Prince’s Trust International, among other important charitable causes.
Tokunboh Ishmael is an impact investor with over 20 years’ experience spanning investment banking, private equity investing, technology, and business development in Africa, Europe, and North America.
She is the Managing Director and co-founder of Alitheia Capital, a Nigeria-based investment management and advisory firm focused on channelling private equity investments into small
and medium sized businesses in West Africa.
In 2015, she co-founded Alitheia IDF to scale investments into women-led SMEs across Sub-Saharan Africa. ‘Tokunboh is a CFA charter-holder, corporate financier and M&A banker, and has historically worked on over $5.6 billion transactions in the UK, USA and Africa. In her past role as Managing Director of Avante Capital Ltd, she advised on a number of acquisitions in the oil and gas sector including the acquisition and financing of a government owned refinery and led the first secondary listing of a Nigerian company on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.
Greta joined the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in August 2021 as the Director, Womens Economic Empowerment. Until recently, she was the CEO of CGAP and a Director at the World Bank Group.
She has 20 years of experience in development finance, primarily focused on small and medium enterprise finance, microfinance, and digital financial services. She has worked with both financial services providers and policy makers in Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia. Her clients and partners have included banks, microfinance institutions, mobile network operators, fintechs and bigtechs. Before joining CGAP, Bull was a manager for Financial Institutions Advisory Services at the International Finance Corporation. As Director of Finance, Banking and Enterprise at DAI Europe, she held overall responsibility for the micro/small business finance and enterprise development consulting practice.
Kanini is a UK Chartered Accountant with extensive audit chair experience gained in East Africa, Europe, and the United States. She is currently responsible for the Africa portfolio of DRK, a US foundation that invests in early and growth-stage entrepreneurs that are providing private sector solutions to global problems. She is the former Board Chair of The Global Innovation Fund, a $250M investment vehicle supported by the UK, US, Canadian, Australian and Swedish Governments. The fund focuses on investing a range of capital for innovations in emerging markets that impact those living on $5 a day and below with a focus on Food and Agriculture, Healthcare, clean energy, and Fintech.
She has worked at the Board level in leadership positions at investment banks in London and the US, such as Bank of America-Merrill Lynch and Dresdner Kleinwort Benson. She continues to provide strategic advisory support to a number of Africa focused impact funds such as the $100m African Agriculture SME Fund and the $30m AHL Venture Fund.
David Kanja is a former Assistant Secretary-General for the Office of Internal Oversight Services at the UN and brings over 27 years of oversight experience. From 2010 to 2012, he served as the Director of the United Nations Childrens Funds (UNICEF) Office of Internal Audit, overseeing all of the internal audit and investigation activities of the organisation. Kanja also served as Chair and Member of UNICEFs Audit Advisory Committee from 2006 to 2009.
He served at the World Bank Group for almost two decades in various positions, including as Senior Auditor and then Manager in Internal Audit Department. Prior to joining the World Bank, he worked at one of the Big Four audit firms, Deloitte, in both Kenya and the United Kingdom. He is a Certified Internal Auditor, Chartered Accountant (England and Wales) and Certified Public Accountant (Kenya), as well as a commerce graduate from the University of Nairobi.