Waveline Growth Partners is a micro lender that is focused on supporting small businesses to promote financial inclusion and economic empowerment. In addition to providing loans, the company aims to add value through extensive use of technology, and promoting financial literacy through a suite of innovative products. Its lending products are provided under the name “Credit Flex”.
Taba has extensive international senior management experience in financial markets, DFI technical assistance programmes and financial sector regulation. She has a wide peer recognition as an authority on the Nigerian capital markets.
She is proficient in French and has exceptional analytical, communication and interpersonal skills, evidenced by an outstanding and consistent record of delivery.
With varied experience on boards and governing councils, including crisis management and intervention in troubled institutions, she constantly seeks to deploy this experience to NED positions, particularly in companies with a regional or global footprint.
As former General Manager, Listings Sales & Retention at the The Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), she was responsible for bringing new companies to list and increasing the value added to existing listed companies, for instance, through the provision of a range of value added services in areas such as governance, independent equity research and investor relations.
Her achievements while there included listing of the first pure play upstream oil and gas company in the first simultaneous IPO with the London Stock Exchange; publication of The Exhange’s first comprehensive guide to listing.
For Taba, microfinance is sadly saddled with a reputational deficit in Nigeria for a variety of reasons. As an example, she says too many people have been burnt by schemes where itinerant scammers posing as loan officers wander around markets collecting the “upfront” payments that are a feature of the sector, promising disbursement in a number of days, only to disappear into thin air.
“In our early days, we had market women coming to our offices, after meeting us for the first time in a market, just to verify that we actually exist before parting with any cash. A humbling experience – nothing like that to put you in your place” She said.
It is Taba’s view that financial literacy cannot be ignored. She admits that it is more complex than it may appear and as such, a big part of her mission is to engage with the communities where they do business, and impact them positively and also promoting financial inclusion through encouraging the opening of bank accounts is one aspect of this.
Taba has a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from The University of Kent and a Master’s Degree in Development Economics from Dalhousie University
