For Lilian Mwai-Ndegwa, every career move has been a deliberate step towards one ambition: solving the structural problems holding Africa back.
As Country Director for Kenya at TradeMark Africa, she is helping dismantle barriers to intra-African trade for faster economic growth, creation of jobs and reducing poverty.
Yet this Afro-optimism did not begin at TradeMark Africa. It has been the defining thread of her career since leaving university. It shaped her tenure at Swisscontact, where she championed programmes aimed at reducing unemployment and improving the livelihoods of young people, refugees, smallholder farmers and micro, small and medium-sized enterprises.
Fresh out of university, she joined KPMG, not because auditing was her calling, but because she saw it as the first step towards a bigger mission.
"The main idea is to strengthen our trade system so that Africa can trade better."
“I wanted to solve Africa’s problems. I knew it in my heart, but I did not know when and where I was going to begin,” she said in a past interview.
More than two decades later, that youthful conviction continues to define her career.
A mother, Mwai-Ndegwa has worked across Somaliland, Tanzania, Uganda, the DRC, Malawi, Rwanda, Burundi, Sudan and South Africa, experiences that have broadened her understanding of the continent.
An alumna of The Kenya High, she studied actuarial science at the University of Nairobi and later pursued ACCA training and a master’s degree in international business.
Her career spans KPMG Kenya, One Acre Fund, Africa Management Institute, Swisscontact and now TradeMark Africa.
Mwai-Ndegwa says she is a fast learner, a trait that has enabled her to move seamlessly across disciplines.
As she leads TradeMark Africa’s largest country programme with a budget of about $20 million (Sh2.59 billion). Her ambition remains unchanged: to build stronger trade systems so Africa can trade more with itself, industrialise faster and create shared prosperity.
“The main idea is to strengthen our trade system so that Africa can trade better,” she says.
–Elvis Ondieki