Amandla is a partner in McKinsey’s Nairobi office, and has been with the firm for over seven years. She is a leader in our Africa Agriculture and Consumer Packaged Goods Practices, and plays a pivotal role within the McKinsey Center for Agricultural Transformation. She began her career at the firm as a summer analyst in our Minneapolis Office, and was an early transfer into our Nigeria office.
An economist by training with a “public sector heart and a private sector mind,” Amandla has served agriculture and food clients in more than 15 countries across Africa, Europe, and the United States with a focus on strategy and implementation—including growth, market entry, route-to-market, and digital design topics.
Examples of Amandla’s recent client work include the following:
- designing the strategic effort for a regional digital food balance sheet covering ten countries and three commodities in East and Southern Africa, supporting an agriculture-focused development partner
- leading growth strategy for a major European remote sensing imagery (RSI) ag-tech company investing in cutting edge RSI agriculture applications
- driving route-to-market strategy for a US agricultural inputs manufacturer seeking to double revenues in Africa, with digital supply chain innovations and agro-dealer financing in five African countries including Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Zambia
- leading growth strategy and route-to-market implementation for a European food retailer, seeking organic and inorganic growth opportunities in core product categories across ten African countries including Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, and Senegal
- helping set up a COVID-19 nerve center for the ministry of agriculture for an African government focused on rapid-response analysis and interventions to support the food security of more than ten million people
- designing a two-year agriculture digital strategy for an African government that identified seven priority digital use cases—including e-incentives for small-scale farmers, land optimization models. Co-led the build of a minimal viable product (MVP) of one use case—a digital food balance sheet
- designing a ten-year national agriculture sector strategy and five-year investment plan for an African government identifying nine flagships with an ambition to increase agricultural GDP by around $4.6 billion, raise incomes by 35 percent, and directly impact 3.3 million farmers across the country
Amandla co-authored McKinsey’s acclaimed series on the Economic Impact of COVID-19 in Africa, is featured in various media—including BBC, Africa.com, and Business Daily—and regularly moderates main-stage sessions at high-level continental fora on agriculture and development, including the African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) and the Tana Forum.
Before joining McKinsey, Amandla served as a lecturer in economics at Strathmore University, and as strategy advisor to several global S&P and FTSE companies, governments and startups including: the Kerry Group, GenPact, the Government of Rwanda, the African Leadership Network, and Mums Village. She is currently a Leadership Council member at the Center for African Studies at Harvard University. She is a Kenyan national with experience living and traveling to more than 50 countries on over five continents.