Ladé Araba is a senior Development Finance Executive and Board Member with over 20 years of experience. Prior to becoming the Executive Director of the AlphaMundi Foundation (AMF), she was the Managing Director for Africa at Convergence Blended Finance.
AMF’s mission is to strengthen the long-term commercial viability of SMEs in Africa and Latin America to drive economic transformation. This leads to more jobs and income generation benefiting more people and in turn, increased purchasing power and improved qualities of life.
Access to capital and technical assistance are two of the biggest barriers to businesses getting off the ground. Therefore, AMF is willing to take the risk and invest in these impactful SMEs. They do this by offering SMEs with investments that may have lower returns and/or higher risks through measures like technical assistance grants, first loss guarantees, returnable pre-investment stage grants, concessional loans, and/or scaling capital.
Lade sits on the Equality Fund’s Investment Advisory Council, serves as a Non Executive Director on the Board of African Risk Capacity (ARC) Ltd, is the Co-Founder/President of the Visiola Foundation, and was an Advisory Committee Member at the Green Outcomes Fund.
She previously served as Technical Adviser to the former Minister of Finance of Nigeria and was the Head of the Strategic Monitoring Unit.
She was also an Adviser in the power sector team at the Nigeria Infrastructure Advisory Facility (NIAF). She was previously a Senior Investment Officer in Infrastructure Finance at the African Development Bank and served as Technical Adviser to the Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa.
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Araba was an Enterprise Development Specialist at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and also worked for the QED Group LLC in Washington, DC.
She holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from Thunderbird School of Global Management and a dual Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) degree in Management Information Systems (MIS) and International Business from the University of Oklahoma (2001).
Lade is a highly skilled, multi-lingual development finance executive and Board member experienced in blended finance, infrastructure/energy project finance and public-private partnerships (PPP). She is well-versed in deal origination, investment appraisal, and advising private investors and government stakeholders.
A strategic leader who is adept at building strong partnerships with private and public clients, Lade is also an effective negotiator with competent communication skills and cultural sensitivity, with a strong track record of getting things done.
She is big on fixing education in Africa. She says that even where basic education is provided at no cost, the quality of instruction and those providing it remain frighteningly low, therefore, every citizen should possess a robust foundational education that enables him/her to become gainfully employed and an economically significant contributor to society.
