Sonja Kazaneza Riedke

Sonja co-founded Samawati Capital Partners in 2018 after having lived and worked in Africa and the Middle East for more than 15 years. Now she brings her on-the-ground experience in the African impact investment space and impact advisory, including strong knowledge of African markets and countries, to Samawati clients and partners.  

Before co-founding Samawati, Sonja was at Deutsche Bank AG, where she managed the investment activities of the Africa Agriculture and Trade Investment Fund (AATIF) in East and Southern Africa. Before that, she worked for the regional GIZ project based out of Ghana focusing on establishing Farmer Business Schools. She is a board member of Agricultural Leasing Company Zambia Limited (AgLeaseCo), a non-banking financial institution sponsored by KfW, the German development bank, that is focused on providing agricultural equipment leases and mechanization solutions to small-scale and emerging farmers in Zambia.

Sonja earned a BS in international management at the European School of Business (ESB) and Dublin City University and an MS in agricultural economics at the University of Bonn.