Speakers Gallery 2020
VIOLA A. LLEWELLYN
Co-founder and President of Ovamba Solutions Inc
Viola Llewellyn is an African woman founder of award-winning TradeTech company, Ovamba Solutions. She is an expert on African entrepreneurship, Banking, Fintech, diversity and digital transformation for emerging markets. Recognized in Vanity Fair Magazine piece on Black Female Tech Founders and her 2018 TED Talk, Ms. Llewellyn has also been an Ambassador to the World Economic Forum as a Global Technology Pioneer and has spoken at the Davos Summit. Ms. Llewellyn serves on the board of a number of corporations and is respected for her support and promotion of fellow women in leadership and STEM discipline
Preston Mendenhall
Executive Vice President, Rendeavour
Preston Mendenhall is Executive Vice President of Rendeavour, Africa’s largest new city builder with 30,000 acres of satellite city developments in Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Zambia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Rendeavour is the owner and developer of Tatu City, the only operational Special Economic Zone in Kenya, and Alaro City, a partnership with the Lagos State Government in the Lekki Free Zone.
Rendeavour is creating infrastructure, industrial zones, housing, offices, schools and hospitals that will help sustain and accelerate Africa’s economic growth and meet the aspirations of the continent’s burgeoning middle class.
Prior to Rendeavour, Preston worked for six years as Vice President for Strategy and Director of Communications at Russian Standard Corporation, one of the world’s largest vodka producers and a leading private consumer bank in Russia.
From 1993-2006, Preston was a producer and correspondent for NBC News, covering global events in the Soviet successor states, Europe, Central and South Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
Toyosi Akerele-Ogunsiji
Founder / CEO of RISE NETWORKS
Toyosi Akerele-Ogunsiji, named by Forbes as one of the 20 most Powerful Young Women in Africa is a Data
Science & Artificial Intelligence Leader, Social Entrepreneur & Policy Advisor in EdTech & Human Capital
Development. She is the Founder / CEO of RISE NETWORKS, Nigeria’s leading Social Enterprise whose
mandate focuses on using Tech Innovation to create advocacy, skills empowerment and learning
opportunities for the inclusive growth of Youth with the core objective of preparing them for effective Value
Based Leadership at all levels in the Public, Private and Social Sectors. Rise Networks owns The Rise Labs,
Nigeria’s first and only Data Science powered Learning, Research and Work Readiness Lab and their
trainings, projects & products are centered around Emerging Technologies and Disruptive Innovation in the
realms of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Internet of Things & Advanced Analytics. We’re knowledge
focused, research and development driven and we teach and create courses in technical skills relevant for the
Future of Work and we create and deliver data driven project/product models for private and public sector
organizations and institutions for the good and growth of society. They designed and built the first career Job
Chat bot in West Africa which was listed as part of the AI Mentoring in the Workplace Working Group of the
UN AI for Good Project in 2019. Another of their flagship projects is Passnownow.com, which is Sub-Saharan
Africa’s most used mobile learning portal with access to curriculum-based education content with
standardized assessments and exam review questions in digital format distributed via web and mobile to
underserved high School Students and Teachers.
Birgit Nevala
Programme Director of Finnpartnership at Finnfund
Master of Arts, majored in African-studies. Finnpartnership together with the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland gives grants to Finnish businesses to start long-term projects in developing countries. Finnpartnership also makes matches between Finnish companies and companies in developing countries.
Previously worked as Development Cooperation and Communications Manager at U-landshälp från Folk till Folk in Finland mainly in teacher training and vocational training projects and agricultural projects in Mozambique, Malawi, India, and Angola. Also acted as a lecturer at Helsinki University for African-studies and as a researcher in Museum of cultures.
Peter Vesterbacka
Serial Entrepreneur
Peter Vesterbacka is an entrepreneur from the Finest Bay Area at the Heart of Eurasia, Helsinki, Finland. Branded communities co-created and initiated by Peter include the HP Bazaar, Mobile Monday, Slush and Startup Sauna to name a few. He was the Mighty Eagle at Angry Birds for many years taking that brand to unprecedented heights. Peter is also currently an adjunct professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Tongji University, one of the leading universities in China. In 2011 Time Magazine named Peter one of the 100 most influential people on the planet.
Dr Ndidi Nnoli Edozien
Chair, Circular Economy Innovation Partnership (CEIP) Africa
Dr. Ndidi Nnoli served as founding Group Chief Sustainability and Governance Officer with Africa’s largest manufacturing conglomerate, Dangote Industries Limited, from March 2017 till June 2020. She was engaged by the President/CEO to initiate Sustainability across the Group. Under her leadership, the Group recruited, trained and mobilized over 2000 Sustainability Champions across 10 African countries and published its first globally-benchmarked Sustainability Report by 2018. Dr. Ndidi’s SevenPillars Methodology was successfully implemented to operationalize sustainability as part of corporate culture (doing) and reporting, named “The Dangote Way”. By 2019, Dangote had achieved the acclaim of being the first Nigerian Premium Board listed by the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) for its $9bn Cement pan-African subsidiary and was acclaimed as the first listed company to comply with the NSE Sustainability Guidelines. We initiated the ‘NSE Facts Behind the Figures’ with our GRI-compliant Sustainability Report on the Floor of the Exchange in May 2019. The Dangote Agribusiness Division and Sugar Refinery also published their first GRI-benchmarked Sustainability Reports in the same year. By June 2020, Dangote Cement Plc had published its first pan-African combined report, internally benchmarked against the globally accepted International IR Framework.
In the private sector, Dr. Ndidi founded and serves as the Board Chair for Afrikairos GmbH, focused on bridging the gap between Europe and Africa, with a focus on impact investing and growing businesses resilience in Africa. She served two full terms as the IFC/World Bank Nominee Director for a leading German-Nigerian Microfinance Bank, spanning 2013 till 2019.
Kingsley Ify
Founder/ CEO, Springboard
A visionary platform that seeks to provide a forum for building sustainable growth by pairing the proven innovation and knowledge transfer credentials of the Nordics with the extensive growth and business potential in Africa – for mutual benefit. His current role involves working with startups, institutional players, and businesses - both private and public - to facilitate future Afro-Nordic business ventures.
His entrepreneurial journey started when he spotted a trade deficit between Nordics and Africa. I, therefore, see the importance of leveraging trade and collaboratory partnerships between the two regions as a way to add long-term value to business development in Africa.
Lauri Tuomaala
Head of International Development Advisory Services (IDAS), KPMG Finland
15 years of experience within the field of international development cooperation and renewable energy in various roles in financing, financial management and audit.
Currently working as Head of Portfolio and Finance for EEP Africa based in South Africa covering 15 Southern and East African countries
EEP Africa is multi-donor Trust Fund, hosted by the Nordic Development, that supports early-stage renewable energy companies, project, and business, models
In-country experience from various African and South-East Asian countries having lived in Singapore and South Africa
Accreditations: Authorised Public Accountant, Certified Internal Auditor, Chartered Public Finance Auditor
IDAS team provides advisory services to companies in business development, networking and fundraising in new markets and expertise in portfolio management and clean energy sector
Kari Alanko,
Policy Adviser at the Department of Africa and the Middle East at the Finnish Foreign Ministry
Mr Kari Alanko currently serves as Policy Adviser at the Department of Africa and the Middle East at the Finnish Foreign Ministry, a position he recently took up.
Before this, he served for four years as Finland’s ambassador to South Africa, from September 2016. He has wide experience of the African continent, having served there on different postings in Kenya, Tanzania, and Namibia in the 1980s and 1990s. He was Finland’s ambassador to Mozambique 2007-2011. Before that, he served as Finland’s ambassador to Vietnam 2002-2007.
Before his posting in South Africa, he was Deputy Director-General of the Africa and Middle-East Department of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Helsinki. He has field experience in Africa for a total of 15 years
Simiso Velempini
CEO, Africa Matters Limited
As the CEO of AML, Simiso leads the strategic direction and growth of Africa Matters. She has extensive consulting and advisory experience in sub-Saharan Africa and is frequently used as a sounding board by senior public and private sector leaders.
Throughout her career, Simiso has provided risk advisory and reputation management services to a wide range of Africa-focused large and mid-sized corporates across a range of sectors. Prior to joining Africa Matters, Simiso Velempini served as Managing Director and Head of K2 Intelligence’s Africa practice, where she led the team’s investigations and dispute resolution work across the continent. Before joining K2 Intelligence, Simiso was based in Johannesburg where, as Vice President of Reputation Management at Barclays Africa, she advised the business on reputation management for specific issues related to transactions and relationships across 12 African markets.
Before joining Barclays, Simiso worked as the Southern Africa analyst at Control Risks, where she provided bespoke analysis and risk consultancy for a range of clients across Southern and East Africa.
Simiso is fluent in English, French, Zulu, and Ndebele.