Hardy Pemhiwa, President & CEO, Cassava Technologies

Hardy is the President and Group Chief Executive Officer of Cassava Technologies. Hardy was Group Chief Executive & Managing Director of Econet for six years, one of the pioneers of the mobile telecoms industry in Africa. 

He has over 20 years’ experience of senior management experience including 5 years at Econet Wireless. He spent over 12 years as a managing director and co-founder of a regulated financial services firm in Kenya offering investment management and investment banking services across Eastern and Southern Africa. In this role, he helped companies in the region to raise more than $500m in debt and equity capital. 

Hardy spent nine years as a senior executive at TDB Group (previously PTA Bank), of which five years were as an Executive Director and member of the Executive Committee. His responsibilities included overseeing the bank’s project finance portfolio across 18 countries in Eastern and Southern Africa, managing relationships with clients and governments, and raising capital for the bank’s lending programs from local and global sources. 

He is a seasoned board-level practitioner with extensive senior management experience across Eastern and Southern Africa in financial services, development banking, telecommunications, media, and infrastructure. 

Hardy holds engineering and business degrees from Queen Mary College (University of London) and the Edinburgh Business School.