Joel MAWENI

Joel has over 13 years’ experience in policy and strategy positions. He has worked as a consultant at 2 think tanks – the Institute for Security Studies in South Africa and the Fredrick S. Pardee in the United States of America. He has participated in consultancy projects on strategy and policy work for Nepad – AUDA, USAID Southern Africa, USAID Ethiopia, Edmonton Economic Development Corporation, Battle River Innovation Centres, Battle River Economic Opportunities Committee and Africa Centre in Canada. Joel has supported work across innovation entities, Tourism entities and Enterprise developments entities. His recent past job involved the development of an economic development strategy for a metropolitan region that has a GDP of over USD $75 billion. Joel managed and worked on over 10 economic development type projects. In 2019 he managed a strategic project at the Edmonton Research Centre worth CAD 1.4 million and delivered it on time. Joel’s strategy work for companies has focused on energy, agriculture, and agro-foods projects with a focus on leveraging technology for productivity. Joel’s recent projects included private sector development program in Alberta, Canada where he managed a CAD 3 million – Canadian dollar economic diversification project for 7 rural communities. A second project involved setting up a black economic empowerment program in Edmonton, Alberta. Joel has a BBA Finance (Zimbabwe), MBA (UK) and a Master’s in Global Finance, Trade and Economic Integration (U.S.A).