After more than 20 years moving between Yaoundé, Manchester, Johannesburg, and Kigali, I’ve learned one thing about money in Africa:
Capital is not the bottleneck. Confidence is.
Confidence to structure a deal that a DFI will actually fund. Confidence to plan wealth across three jurisdictions without losing half of it to tax. Confidence to walk into a boardroom in Douala or Cape Town and own the conversation.
I’ve spent two decades building that confidence — for African businesses raising growth capital, for HNW families protecting generational wealth, and for bankers learning to advise with rigour.
Today, I do three things:
- I structure development finance transactions for the IFC across Cameroon, Gabon, and the CAR — from €9M agro-deals to €50M syndicated facilities.
- I run Premier Private Wealth, a pan-African wealth firm with offices in Rwanda and South Africa, helping families plan across borders with the rigour they’d get in Geneva.
- I train. I taught the Ecobank Financial Planning Certification to relationship managers in all 33 of their African markets — because Africa’s next economic revolution will be built on financial literacy, not just foreign capital.
Over the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing what I’ve learned about:
- How African businesses can access DFI funding (not the brochure version)
- Cross-border wealth structuring for Africans living between continents
- Why financial literacy is a national security issue
- Stories from the deal room — the wins, the losses, and the lessons
If any of that resonates, follow along. And if you’re building something in Africa — or building wealth from Africa — let’s talk.
Drop a in the comments and tell me which country you’re tuning in from.