Marina Diboma has a passion in building bridges between people and organizations, and vice versa. She has more than a decade of experience in International Trade Development with a focus on economic diplomacy, business development, entrepreneurship, stakeholders management, public private partnerships projects, investment facilitation and commercial leadership. She has successfully forged joint-partnerships with foreign governments, built strong relationships with international organizations, mobilize financial resources, and co-developed programmes on private sector development in African countries.
Marina is recognized as an expert in investment promotion and private sector development with ability to initiate and deliver strategic partnerships, deal closures, maintaining revenue and profit gains, while displaying high level of integrity and responsibility. She has an extensive knowledge and understanding of European and Sub-Saharan African markets in developing strategic linkages to promote Africa’s economic transformation.
As an expert on Africa and development cooperation, Marina participates in various initiatives. It is in this context that she is a member of the INCLUDE platform, a platform that advises both the Dutch government and selected African states in their inclusive development policies. She is also a board member of the foundation African Studies Centre in Leiden. She recently joined EUCORD as a supervisory board member.
Being at the heart of the recent economic and political developments in Africa, Marina is very often invited as a speaker and/or facilitator at seminars, conferences in the Netherlands, Africa and other European countries to share her vision on different subjects. In her various roles as a moderator, she has interacted with high level personalities such as the Head of State of Benin H.E. Patrice Talon, and Prince Constantijn van Oranje.
As a young African leader, Marina represents the international civil society network Africa 2.0 in the Netherlands. She is the vice president of the African Young Professional Network (AYP Network) and also a co-founder of the online channel Business Safari TV that promotes business opportunities in Africa and the various actors at the heart of this development.
Roelant is responsible for the commercial activities at Adyen. He has been with Adyen since 2007. After starting his career as a consultant, he moved on to the online payments industry in early 2000. Throughout the years, Roelant has held various international management roles in sales and business development for companies providing payment solutions to international ecommerce businesses.
Steven is a change maker, with a passion for both international and organizational development. He has been working on economic development and trade throughout his career, working in multilateral, bilateral and private sector arena’s.
He served as a diplomat in Tanzania and Vietnam.
He was speechwriter and chief of staff at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
He was Executive Board member of IDH, the Sustainable Trade Initiative, making the business case for sustainable value chains.
In his current role, Steven is responsible for promoting responsible entrepreneurship and a sustainable business environment, creating more and better jobs and partnerships with the private sector for the Sustainable Development Goals.
Onno Schellekens is CEO of CarePay International. The company enables public and private
Payers to offer mobile health contracts to clinics and patients. Starting with Mpesa in Kenia
and working closely together with other mobile operators in Africa, CarePay has enrolled
millions of people on the platform. Headquarters of the company is based in Amsterdam.
CarePay recently raised a USD 45 million round A investment. CarePay won the 2017 Financial
Times/IFC Transformational Business Award, was named 2018 Technology Pioneer by the World
Economic Forum and won the 2019 Swiss Re Resilience award.
Prior to CarePay International Onno was the CEO of the PharmAccess Group. Onno has a Master’s
degree in Business Economics from the University of Groningen and completed courses at Harvard
Business School and INSEAD.
Since May 2018, Monique Dolfing-Vogelenzang serves as CEO of the PharmAccess Group. PharmAccess is an international NGO, dedicated to making inclusive health markets work in sub-Saharan Africa. PharmAccess uses an integrated approach focused on strengthening both the demand and supply-side of the health system , as well as capitalizing on the potential of digital innovations, mobile technology for health financing and public-private partnerships.
At PharmAccess, Monique established the Medical Credit Fund, a USD 45 million social impact fund
that uses innovative, blended financing approaches to provide loans to healthcare providers in Africa.
From 2016 to April 2018 Monique served as the Group COO, overseeing all implementation activities
of the Group, and was responsible for the Group strategy development, fund and partner
management. Prior to joining PharmAccess, Monique held a variety of senior management positions
in the private sector, predominantly related to complex IT projects for large financial institutions. She
holds a Master of Laws from the University of Leiden, the Netherlands.
Guido Geerts has 20+ years of experience in running multinational companies that deliver diagnostic imaging equipment and related software & services. Currently, Mr. Geerts is the President & CEO of Delft Imaging Systems, a company that provides diagnostic imaging devices & artificial intelligence solutions (CAD4TB) to National Tuberculosis Programs globally. Active in 35 countries and with offices in South Africa and Ghana, Delft’s solutions have helped to screen over 3 million people for tuberculosis.
In addition, Mr. Geerts is the Co-Chair of the Data & Diagnostic workgroup of the StopTB Private Sector Consortium and an active member of the Dutch Task Force Health Care.
Guido Geerts has 20+ years of experience in running multinational companies that deliver diagnostic imaging equipment and related software & services. Currently, Mr. Geerts is the President & CEO of Delft Imaging Systems, a company that provides diagnostic imaging devices & artificial intelligence solutions (CAD4TB) to National Tuberculosis Programs globally. Active in 35 countries and with offices in South Africa and Ghana, Delft’s solutions have helped to screen over 3 million people for tuberculosis.
Mr. Geerts is also CEO of Thirona, a company focusing on artificial intelligence in the field of the analysis of thoracic CT scans, chest X-rays and retinal images.
In addition, Mr. Geerts is the Co-Chair of the Data & Diagnostic workgroup of the StopTB Private Sector Consortium and an active member of the Dutch Task Force Health Care.
Innovation and excellence define Patricia Monthé, she is the promoter of the digital hospital in frontier countries. She takes takes pride in being a challenger of the status quo. She is an ambidextrous thinker with good abilities to match strategic with operational thinking, technical with managerial knowledge, as well as rational with intuitive insights. People describe Patricia as entrepreneurial and energizing, for the enthusiasm she exhibits towards situations that require new knowledge and innovative thinking.
Patricia is a disruptive transformation leader who worked for corporates like Philips and Office Depot. Most people still think that means being a consultant teaching clients about how to be digitally relevant, but joining the new and future economy takes more than that. It takes articulating a new vision personally and as a corporation. It also requires a strategy and tactic that takes account of your legacy, and enables a support system to see you and your organisation through the dead valleys of transformation.
Joris Moolenaar is the founder and CEO of e-health platform Karify. Joris has been one of the pioneers in the field of digital healthcare in the Netherlands. Building digital healthcare clinics with great success. Joris has a background in innovation management and building businesses. His enthusiasm for web-based software that improves the lives of many by offering digital healthcare has led Karify to become the market leader in e-health with a focus on mental health care. Karify services a growing number of patients of 70.000 patients a month, thus proving that digital healthcare is becoming a new norm in healthcare delivery within the Netherlands and other countries.
Jan-Willem currently serves as Vice President Global Government and Public Affairs at
Royal Philips, where he heads up the global network within Philips that is responsible for the
relations with governments and related stakeholders to address societal challenges in particular
in the area of large scale health care transformations.
He is also responsible for partnerships with international partners such as the United Nations
and International donors. In that role Jan-Willem is focusing on partnerships that
strengthen health systems in support of achieving Universal Health Coverage.
Jan-Willem is a member of the Global Finance Facility Investors Group, member of the
UHC 2030 Private Sector Constituency and Chairman of the UN Global Compact
Netherlands.
Jan-Willem joined Philips in 2009 as Senior Director as part of the Corporate Sustainability
Office with responsibility for risk and reputation management.
He started his career at the United Nations Environment Program, where he developed best
practices guides related to cleaner production for emerging markets. Subsequently, he held a
number of sustainability and government affairs related functions at the BLC Leather
Confederation, Epson, and Hewlett-Packard.
Jan-Willem holds a Masters degree in Environmental Technology from Wageningen
University, the Neterlands, he is married and has two children.
Karim Beguir is the co-founder and CEO of InstaDeep. He has an engineering and mathematic background: he is a Polytechnique graduate in Applied Mathematics & Economics, has a Statistician- Economist Degree from Ensae ParisTech along with Msc in Applied Mathematics & Finance from NYU. In 2014, Karim co-founded InstaDeep, a London based start-up that develops and proposes Artificial Intelligence products for enterprises. InstaDeep’s mission is to use artificial intelligence in order to raise the processes’ efficiency of its clients in logistics, mobility, manufacturing and energy, The company focuses on the whole Supply Chain of its clients through Supply Chain Digitalization, AI Machine Learning , Predictive Maintenance to IoT Sensors and Warehouse Animation.
Starting as per January 2019 in a new position as FMO Ventures Program Manager, Marieke is in charge of setting up FMO’s Ventures Program, coordinating efforts related to the establishment of a dedicated Ventures Team, the drafting of the investment strategy for early stage investments in Fintech, Off Grid energy, Agritech and Venture Capital fund opportunities, as well as the blending efforts related to the funding of the Program. Previously she worked as Principal Investment Officer at the Private Equity department focusing on investments in renewable (off grid) energy.
Prior to this she spent 2.5 years as Fund Manager at FMO Investment Management, where she was responsible for the fundraising efforts of an Africa focused Fund of Funds initiative. Before joining FMO Investment Management in 2013, Marieke worked as Senior Investment Officer at FMO’s Private Equity department for nearly nine years. She joined FMO in 2004 with an initial focus on Asia; from mid 2005 onwards she focused mainly on the Latin American region. She is a seasoned private equity professional with ample transaction experience in fund investments as well as direct investments in a broad range of sectors. She served on the Advisory Board of several investment funds.
Before joining FMO, Marieke worked as an Analyst at the Corporate Development department of ABN AMRO Bank. She holds a Master of Science in Business Administration from the Erasmus University in Rotterdam.
André Leliveld is a senior researcher at the African Studies Centre Leiden at Leiden University. He has done a number of research projects on informal insurance, (informal) labour and social protection and community-based (health) insurance schemes in Africa, particularly in Togo, Uganda and Swaziland. Since 2013 he is also Associate Director of the Centre for Frugal Innovation in Africa, which is part of the strategic alliance between Leiden University, Delft University of Technology and Erasmus University Rotterdam. His main research interest is in the role of (frugal) innovations and technologies in (rural and urban) transformation trajectories in African economies and societies, with a focus on East Africa. Currently, he is involved in a research project on the role of E-/M-health in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of waterborne diseases (such as schistosomiasis), and in the development of a project on (frugal) design and innovation and safer cities. André Leliveld holds an MSc and PhD degree in (development) economics at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
Earl is a YC Fellow, a Forbes 30 under 30, and a proud Tufts alumni and Oregon native. Apollo Agriculture helps subsistence farmers transition to farming as a business. Apollo use a deeply integrated Engineering, Data Science, and Operations platform to make serving extremely rural small loans possible.
George Odo is currently a Senior Partner at AfricInvest and MD for East Africa. He has
over 25 years’ professional experience.
George has led investments into and ‘exits’ from investments in several sectors including banking, insurance, education, FMCG and Health. He has also served on several boards for over 15 years, including international NGOs, banks, insurance groups, health business and manufacturing groups. George has worked in a number of countries in the region including Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Sudan, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique.
George initially trained as a Certified accountant (in Kenya), as an accredited
Partnership Broker (in the UK & Kenya) and also holds a MBA from USIU (Kenya) and
Columbia University (USA)
After nearly 20 years in IT. datacentres and a successful circumnavigation with sailing yacht Helena, Rolf Brink founded Asperitas. His background in product development for cloud architectures and datacentre infrastructure, combined with a passion for cleantech innovations like liquid cooling, are the foundation of the developments which drive Asperitas. By now, Asperitas is leading the datacentre industry by stimulating cross-industry collaborations and deploying hi-tech Immersed Computing® solutions which will play a vital role in the energy transition and allow efficient datacentres to be deployed anywhere in the world, regardless of climate
Khaled Ben Jilani is a Senior Partner and a member of the ExCom of AfricInvest. He oversees the Innovation team and the financial sector team. Since joining AfricInvest in 2001, Khaled has been involved in the structuring, fundraising and management of 3 PE and VC investment funds and has overseen >30 investments across Africa in innovative companies and in financial institutions. Khaled is also a startup ecosystem activist that has advocated for simpler regulations and laws for startups and has helped governments draft startup and VC friendly laws and regulations. He is also an angel investor. Before joining AfricInvest, Khaled was successively an analyst at Barclays Bank working on European payment systems, a developer in a Tunisian venture where he designed RTGS and Net payment systems now running in 18 African countries, and tech strategy consultant at Proxicom, a technology consulting firm in the US.
