Kenya’s Economic Potential: The Business Perspective – Mombasa

Farida Abbas is the CEO of the British Chamber of Commerce in Kenya. She is appointed to provide leadership and strategic vision to the Chamber by identifying, evaluating, and developing trade and investment opportunities between Kenya and the United Kingdom.
Farida comes from a background in sustainable business development and leadership development and thrives on growing SME capacity building. She is renowned as a strategic thinker and a creative problem solver who can focus on complex challenges and turn them into tangible, quantifiable strategies for businesses and individuals.
She is fully aware of the significance of establishing relationships of trust and transparency to engage multiple key stakeholders for growth and expansion. Farida draws on work from her experience with the FTSE 100 companies in Kenya, including Diageo, AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline and G4S.

Chris is a seasoned project manager with 25 years of successful project implementation and management across air and land, specializing in project logistics for large scale infrastructure and mining projects. Utilizes a background in transport/ logistics management and HSSE processes, procedures and protocols in challenging and diverse environments. Experience of managing projects from RFQ/ pricing stage to delivery and sign off, working with clients across all stages. Often managing multiple projects at the same time and in different countries. Extensive experience of developing transport management plans and related risk assessments. Well versed in the commercial side of contracts, reporting and regulatory compliance. Experience of working in challenging business environments in East and Central Africa including Burundi, Central African Republic (CAR), Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, Tanzania and Uganda, as well in Afghanistan.

He is an Investment and Commercial Banker. He has set up businesses in excess of a billion dollars across the globe. He is the Founder Chairman of GulfCap Africa. He is also the serving Chairman of Buxton Point Apartments Limited (The Largest Affordable Housing project in Kenya so far). He was appointed the Chairman of KenTrade a Kenyan Government parastatal mandated to facilitate and promote trade in Kenya (served for three years, 2018 to 2021. He is the Founder and first Chairman of Gulf African Bank, Kenya’s first and the leading Islamic Bank. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Business Management (Finance Option) at Strathmore University. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Finance from University of Illinois, He then studied International Banking at the University of Colorado Boulder and a Global MBA from United States International University.