The three young black women under the age of 35 were appointed by South Africa’s Minister of Finance, Enoch Godongwana, and the appointments have been approved by the South African government.
“Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana has appointed three black female professionals to key positions in the public service, in recognition of their particular professional and academic talents, as well as the urgent and ongoing need to achieve gender equality in the workplace,” the South African Department of Finance said in a statement on its website.
Agricultural economist Thabi Nkosi, 35, has been appointed chairwoman of the Land and Agricultural Development Bank, the largest lender to farmers in South Africa. She is charged with leading the revival of the Land Bank, which is a key player in South Africa’s food security, providing nearly one-third of the country’s agricultural debt.
Thabi Nkosi is an agricultural economist, investor and agribusiness strategist with over 15 years of experience. She is a founding partner of African Green Alpha, a South African private equity fund specializing in agribusiness, and chair of the Coca-Cola Mintirho Fund, the agricultural investment fund of Coca-Cola Bottlers SA, which provides growth capital to emerging farmers.
Thabi Nkosi is one of South Africa’s leading agricultural economists. She has worked with businesses in the agricultural sector to unlock growth and find solutions. Prior to co-founding African Green Alpha, Thabi Nkosi held numerous senior positions in the agricultural sector. These include Executive Director of Investments for AFGRI Group Holdings, a leading agricultural services company whose core competencies are to enhance, support and guide the growth of agricultural businesses. She also served as an agribusiness investment specialist at the Public Investment Corporation (PIC), Africa’s largest asset manager. At the PIC, Thabi Nkosi spearheaded the organisation’s agribusiness investment strategy with the aim of identifying investment opportunities and enhancing the performance of the organisation’s agribusiness investment portfolio.
In addition, Thabi Nkosi was a senior economist at Agri SA, the South African agricultural industry union, and was also the national market manager at the South African Sugar Association.
Thabi Nkosi has also served on the boards of AFGRI Operations, GroCapital Holdings, KHULA, Daybreak Poultry and AFGRI International. Thabi Nkosi has published numerous expert opinions in leading business publications and in 2018 delivered a popular TED Talk on the affliction of the industry’s misplaced “ugly duckling.” Thabi Nkosi holds an MBA and postgraduate degree from the Gordon Institute of Business Science, Johannesburg, South Africa, and a BSc (Agric) in Agricultural Economics from the University of Pretoria, South Africa.
Thabi Nkosi is also currently an independent non-executive director of the National Empowerment Fund, an organization charged with promoting and facilitating black participation in the economy by providing financial and non-financial support to black self-employed businesses, and promoting a culture of savings and investment among blacks. Thabi Nkosi is also an advisory director of the agricultural technology company KHULA.
Special Advisor to the Minister of Finance
Pamela Mondliwa, 35, has been appointed Special Advisor to the Minister of Finance on Economic Policy. She will be responsible for providing expert advice and analysis on macroeconomics, industrial policy and competition law, among other areas.
Pamela Mondliwa is a senior consultant at Berkeley Research Group (BRG), a global consulting firm that helps leading organizations advance in three key areas: litigation and investigations, corporate finance, and performance improvement and consulting.
Pamela Mondliwa is also a research associate at the Centre for Competition, Regulation and Economic Development (CCRED) at the University of Johannesburg. She has worked and published extensively on industrial development, competition and economic regulation issues in Southern Africa, advising government departments, competition authorities and regulatory bodies. Pamela Mondliwa previously served as a senior researcher at CCRED. During this time, she also worked as an economist at Acacia Economics.
Prior to that, between 2009 and 2013, Pamela Mondliwa worked as an economist for the Competition Commission in its Policy and Research Division. She worked on complex merger, cartel and abuse of dominance cases. She was also a member of the Economic Advisory Committee to David Makhura, Premier of Gauteng Province, South Africa. She has experience in the economic analysis of enforcement cases, cartels, mergers and acquisitions and impact assessments in a wide range of sectors.
Pamela Mondliwa specializes in the interrelationships between competition, economic regulation, technological change and industrial development.
Pamela Mondliwa Mondliwa holds a Master’s degree in Commerce from the University of Johannesburg and a Bachelor’s degree and Honours degree in Commerce from Rhodes University, South Africa.
Responsible for relations with the South African Parliament
Nokwanda Mahori, 34, has been appointed as the South African Parliament’s Relationship Officer for the Department of Finance. She will serve as a liaison between the department, Parliament and members of the public on matters related to Parliament. She brings a wealth of experience having worked at the intersection of politics, economics and public policy.
Her multi-disciplinary skills, it is explained, are based on her work experience with various non-profit and research organizations on a range of policy issues, such as financial inclusion, microfinance and labor issues.
Nokwanda Mahori also led market research for South African and international companies and innovation centers, before working as a coordinator for the African National Congress’ (ANC) Economic Transformation Subcommittee, focusing on policy implementation, monitoring and evaluation. “These skills position her to enhance the work of the ministry team,” the ministry says.
Nokwanda Mahori holds a bachelor’s degree in business from the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, a postgraduate diploma in business administration from the University of South Africa (UNISA) and is currently a master’s candidate in management at the Wits School of Governance at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.
