Elijah has over 13 years of experience in sustainable financing, carbon development, and ESG risk management. He has multisectoral experience ranging from financial services, manufacturing, and development institutions programme management and consulting across Africa.
His experience includes heading Equity’s Group Sustainability Operations and also managed the unit as an acting Group Sustainability Director. During his tenure at Equity, he integrated the Group ESG risk management across all six subsidiaries of the Bank, in East and Central Africa. He enhanced Sustainable Finance approaches by developing segment customer value propositions and forging strategic partnerships to support fundraising for climate financing and portfolio de-risking through guarantees and capacity building. He started the accreditation process under the Green Climate Fund and developed the Carbon Finance Framework for Equity. In addition, he positioned the Group’s disclosures by developing the Group Sustainability report in line with Global Standards, GRI, TCFD, and TNFD.
Prior to Equity, he was the Group Sustainability Manager for KCB Group, overseeing the development and execution of the Sustainable strategy across the regional markets where KCB operated. He saw the Group’s climate financing increase to 11% of the portfolio and the development of the first Green Climate Finance concept programme.
He also worked at Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM) as AFD’s SUNREF East Africa Technical Assistance Programme Coordinator, where he oversaw a 120M USD programme across Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, working with financial institutions. He also worked as Green Growth and Climate Change Executive at KAM.
He worked at a consulting firm, Carbon Africa Ltd, as a Project Officer, where he was in charge of carbon project origination, project registration, and monitoring issuance supporting projects across Africa from Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Zambia, Mozambique, Ghana, Cameroon, Rwanda, in addition to working with regional governments in obtaining favourable opinions for project registration under both the compliance and voluntary carbon markets.
Elijah holds a degree in Environmental Horticulture and Landscape Technology from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology. He is a certified Carbon Analyst by the Institute of Environmental Management, UK, Certified Sustainable Finance Expert from Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, and is an associate Environmental and Social Impact Assessment expert by National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA), Kenya.