Faridah Usman is an experienced investment professional who has spent her career focused on catalysing growth and impact across the African continent. She has helped build and oversee a portfolio of investments and partnerships across several industry sectors, including financial services, agribusiness and technology.
Usman is committed to empowering businesses that are driving socio-economic change in Sub-Saharan Africa. As a trailblazer in a traditionally male-dominated industry, Faridah is dedicated to addressing the gender finance gap that exists for women entrepreneurs.
She is currently a Director at Kuramo Capital Management, one of sub-Saharan Africa’s leading primary and secondary investment firms providing regional access to world-class institutional investors (LPs) representing nearly US$2 trillion in AUM.
With roughly a decade of experience in sourcing, due diligence, portfolio construction and value creation, she is responsible for over $150million in committed capital to private equity and venture capital funds in Africa.
Kuramo Capital Management is an independent investment management firm championing private commercial capital into Africa. They provide targeted global investment management services to institutional clients and ultra-high net worth individuals, focused on alternative assets in emerging and frontier markets
Outside of Kuramo, Faridah was the Executive Director of the Nigeria Higher Education Foundation (NHEF), an organisation founded in 2004 by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to help Nigerian universities become self-sustaining. Faridah founded the NHEF Scholars Program with the goal of creating skills development and employment opportunities for talented young Nigerians. To date, the foundation has inducted about 200 scholars and trained thousands more through its skills-building and capacity development programs.
She also designed the NHEF Online Skills Academy (NHEF-OSA) to virtually deliver real-world career knowledge and insight from world-class industry professionals.
Furthermore, she expanded the reach of the foundation’s institutional partnerships from 5 founding partner universities to 8 universities.
Faridah holds a graduate degree with honors from the University of Warwick and a dual Master’s degree from New York University (NYU). She is also one of only a few black women to hold both the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA) designations
