Media room

Dr Robert Ochola is an expert in strategy and innovation within the African banking and mobile telecommunications industry.

He is responsible for AfricaNenda’s overall strategy execution and leadership. His primary focus at AfricaNenda is on building momentum for an inclusive and interoperable approach to digital payments across Africa.

During his career, Robert has pioneered the development of a new Pan-African Payments and Settlement Systems (PAPSS) for driving cross-border trade, led the development of mobile payment solutions and the expansion of its product suite, along with overseeing the successful roll-out of solutions for ultra-low-cost mobile devices across Africa and the Middle East.

Prior to joining AfricaNenda, as Chief Executive Officer, Robert served as the Director of Strategy and Innovation at Afreximbank, served as Head of Strategy with Safaricom, and was the Director of Strategy, Research and Innovation at the KCB Bank Group.

He is an alumnus of Imperial College London, Warwick Business School and the University of Cape Town. He also successfully completed Harvard Business School’s executive education program “Competing in the Age of AI.” See the certificate here: Competing in the Age of AI Certificate – Dr Robert Ochola

Sabine F. Mensah has strong leadership experience in digital payments and mobile money across multilaterals and the private sector.

As the Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Sabine oversees AfricaNenda’s capacity-building and partnership efforts through convenings and thought leadership, with the aim of strengthening the payments ecosystem across Africa.

Prior to joining AfricaNenda, Sabine served as the Regional Digital Hub Manager for the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), where she led the development of inclusive digital economies to accelerate financial inclusion across West and Central Africa. She also successfully drove UNCDF’s global digital infrastructure workstream.

As the Regional Director responsible for domestic and international remittances at Western Union Canada, she specialised in agent network management and remittance product design.

Sabine is a Certified Digital Finance Practitioner by Digital Frontier Institute, and an alumna of the Institut Franco-Américain de Management in France and Central Michigan University in the United States.

Akinwale Goodluck is a prominent expert in the operations and regulations ecosystem of African mobile networks.

Akinwale primarily focuses on building AfricaNenda’s project pipeline, and determining the level of effort and investment needed across payment systems and project deployments.

Prior to joining AfricaNenda Akinwale served as Head of GSMA sub-Saharan Africa, where he spearheaded the fulfilment of GSMA’s goals of promoting the best regulatory and policy practices for the mobile sector, and advocated for a strong environment in the mobile payments sector to achieve universal financial inclusion. He also worked with MTN, where he specialised in the regulatory and policy regime surrounding ICT and mobile communications throughout Africa.

Akinwale is an alumnus of Lagos State University, the Nigeria Law School and Harvard Business School.