Olivia Byanyima is one of Uganda’s most prominent investment advisory titans. She graduated from Makerere University with a bachelor’s degree in Quantitative Economics before topping it up with a Masters from the prestigious Columbia University in the USA where she would return to pursue an MBA.
In 2005, she began her career working with Avis Budget Group, a car rental company, as a data analyst in revenue management. After a year, she left for the banking giant, HSBC in a role as the strategy and analytics lead. She would also have pit stops at Blackhawk Network, a fintech in San Francisco, J.P Morgan as an associate in its investment banking division and at RBC Capital Markets.
In 2013, she started her own company called Olivia Knox with Shanley Knox after raising $7,000 on Indiegogo. Oliva Knox was a company that manufactured jewellery, eyeglass frames, dishes and other products made from the long horns of the Ankole cattle. Other than making money, Olivia wanted to ensure the long-term future of the Ankole cattle after researchers forecasted that pure-breed Ankole cattle could be extinct by the middle of the century.
The Ankole cattle, known for their gigantic curved horns, have been mixed with other breeds as farmers look to up milk and meat production. “Our culture revolves around this animal,” Olivia said in a 2016 article with Fast Company. “Now the farmer is not just raising it for meat and milk. It’s for the entirety (with the market for its horns)”.
She has worked as a member of the investment committee of the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) which invests in early-stage businesses in financial inclusion, energy, agriculture and infrastructure. She was also the regional transaction advisor for BDO, leading to a capital raise of over $10m for both greenfield and brownfield projects in 7 African countries. In 2022, she also founded the Quixotic Project, a transaction advisory service to unlock capital for the private sector that still runs to this day. She has also been a consultant for the World Bank in the energy and extractives group for almost a decade.
Energy Ministry Orders UEDCL Board to Investigate Top Management Over Performance GapsCurrently. Olivia is the Regional Director of the Nordic Impact Fund, a role she assumed in January 2024. The Nordic Impact Fund is a private equity fund that focuses on creating social impact for low-income people in East Africa by investing in scalable and economically viable businesses.
The fund targets businesses that offer underserved communities opportunities for jobs and income or desirable services and products that improve their quality of life. It provides either debt or equity to support the growth of these businesses, which must have a proven scalable model and proof of social impact. The fund measures social impact using international standards and external evaluators, aiming to create a positive impact for more than a million lives in East Africa.
Olivia Byanyima is one of CEO East Africa’s 25 Movers and Shakers in East Africa’s Private Equity and Venture Capital markets. This is a list of some of the people behind the $5.5bn worth of equity deals and $5.1bn worth of venture capital deals that East Africa recorded from 2013-2023. You can read all the profiles of the 25 here.
