Speaker Group: Business Leader

With over 17 years of experience in the financial services industry, Kasief Isaacs joined Mergence in 2015. As Senior Investment Principal he has a specific focus on energy, infrastructure and impact within SA and SADC. He leads the Private Markets investment team which has built up a stellar performance record over the past decade. Before… Read more »

Eerik Oja grew up in Räpina, a small town in rural Estonia. After graduating high school and completing military service, he got his bachelor’s degree at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga. He then moved to Tallinn, working as an investor relations specialist for farming organization Agromino, and as an analyst and business development… Read more »

Amaka Okechuwu Opara is an investment professional with over 15 years of experience in private sector and international development. She is the founding partner at WEAV Capital, an early stage VC dedicated to funding and supporting the most innovative female founders across Africa. She previously worked at the World Bank on private sector development, directly… Read more »

Raphael Dana is a serial entrepreneur which specialties include corporate finance, blockchain, disruptive business ideas, start-up modeling, go-global strategy, recruitment of growth team, sales and marketing. Prior to founding Gozem, Raphael Dana co-founded IEG Singapore Joint Venture with IEG Banking (berlin) in 2017 to provide corporate finance advisory to technology companies in Southeast Asia (SEA)…. Read more »

Sara Enan is a senior associate at VenterSouq, growing its Fintech fund in Egypt. She held previous roles at Global Ventures, where she focused on portfolio value creation, reporting, and NAL investment deal sourcing and evaluation. Before this, she was a Regional Programs Associate at Flat6Labs, where she developed and supported the operational expansion in… Read more »

Maxime Bouan is a seasoned investor in the African landscape, investing for nearly 15 years in the region across banking, fintech, education, energy, and agriculture. After managing BlueOrchard Finance’s African strategy for 8 years, he is co-founding Partner at Seedstars Africa Ventures and Investment committee member of the Africa Entreprise Challenge Fund.

Chris Wehbé is the Chief Executive Officer of Lendable. Previously, he was a Partner of Arrowgrass Capital Partners where he served as Head of Relative Value globally for the multi-strategy firm, overseeing the Convertible Arbitrage, Volatility Arbitrage, and Capital Structure Arbitrage strategies. He also served as Chief Investment Officer for the firm’s tail-hedging product the… Read more »

Hussein Sefian is the Founding Partner of Acre Impact Capital, responsible for strategy, business development, growth and partnerships. Acre Impact Capital invests climate-aligned infrastructure by partnering with leading commercial lenders and Export Credit Agencies. The Firm is supported by The Rockefeller Foundation and GuarantCo a Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) company. Prior to founding Acre… Read more »

Luni Libes is a 30+ year serial entrepreneur turned teacher, author, and investor. Luni is the co-founder of Africa Eats, a pan-African investment holding company, and founder of Fledge, a global network of business accelerators. Africa Eats is a unique investment firm. We’re not a fund. We’re not a conglomerate. We’re a mash-up of the… Read more »

Engr. Bello Mohammed Tongo is an award-winning experienced educational, construction, design and innovation professional, entrepreneur. He is the Executive Director, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Tongston Entrepreneurship Group (Tongston), a leading award-winning pan-African group connecting entrepreneurship and education through finance, media and business. Bello is a Top 100 Visionary in Education conferred by the… Read more »