Sewu-Steve TAWIA

Venture Capital | Development Finance | Angel

​Sewu-Steve Tawia is an investment and development professional with over 20 years of professional experience in finance, consulting, impact investing and venture capital funds in Europe and Africa. A digital finance expert, he is also an active angel and early-stage investor across Africa, both Francophone and Anglophone.
 

A fully English-French bilingual, he is currently a fund manager at Jaza Rift Ventures, a seed stage healthtech and medtech fund built in partnership with Villgro Africa. His experience spans angel investments, VC investments, fund of funds structuring and fundraising. An avid African angel investor through Asime Ventures, Accra Angels Network and ViKtoria Ventures, he has invested in and mentored more than 20 startups and tech-enabled SMEs in Africa across fintech, healthtech, edtech, agritech, insuretech, retailtech and renewable energy. Sewu-Steve has managed more than US$ 400m of investments and catalysed over US$100m into 250+ SMEs and startups across 26 countries in Africa. He has networks across Europe, US and Africa in private equity, venture capital, impact investing and development finance. He’s a strong advocate of gender equality and women economic. empowerment.
 

Sewu-Steve is an alumnus of London Business School, Audencia Business School, and has an executive leadership certificate in social entrepreneurship (EPSE) from Stanford GSB. He holds a number of professional charters: CAIA (alternative investments), CIFE (Islamic Finance), CGIA (finance), CDFP (Digital Finance, exp. 2022), Prince 2 (project management) and Toastmaster (public speaking) while being an innovation geek, JKA Karate (3rd Dan) and Kizomba instructor.

​Tech Skills

- Fintech Product Management

- Blockchain and Cryptocurrency

- Cybersecurity

- Digital Identity

- Certificate in Money Markets

- Digitizing Agriculture

- AI in Finance

- Leading Digital Money Markets

- C++, C#, VBA, Python, Machine Learning etc.

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Travelled to more than 32 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.

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Martial Arts, Presenter and Art Collector:

 - Africa Contemporary Art: TBM

 - Karate JKA, Kizomba and Salsa

 - Speaking & MC: AfDB, Alliance Francaise