dialogue
global thinking

Changes Across
Africa

His firm invests in food, consumers, and renewable energy
by Sherry L. Howard
The path that Richard Okello ’98 took to co-founding a private-equity firm started in a Welsh boarding school and widened at Swarthmore.

As a teenager in Uganda, he was chosen to attend the United World College of the Atlantic in Wales. He knew that he was lucky, he says. It could have been any other smart, self-assured student, so he decided that he had to find a way to give back.

Closeup of Richard Okello
Sali Sali Photography, Johannesburg, South Africa
“The greatest returns and the greatest impact have always happened in places where people initially don’t want to go to,” says Richard Okello ’98, co-founder of Sango Capital.
After college, he figured he’d return to Uganda, hire some people, and make money. But Philosophy Professor Richard Schuldenfrei urged him to think more deeply, suggesting he might do a lot more than he would by simply barreling down a single path.

“It took me off the ‘Get on this path, drive down, execute,’” says Okello, who initially had questioned his need for philosophy.

RICHARD OKELLO ’98
Investor
At Swarthmore, he developed a “broader public mindset,” he says. A driven and focused student, he graduated in three years with a B.A. in economics and a minor in public policy. He then received an MBA from Pace University in New York.

Okello was a principal and partner at two billion-dollar global funds before co-founding Sango Capital eight years ago. Based in South Africa, Sango has a portfolio of $400 million and manages three private-equity funds. It specializes in three sectors — consumer, food, and renewable energy — while investing in 20 countries in Africa, including Nigeria, where it worked with a company to provide natural-gas power plants.

“Historically, you have had a lot of capital that came into the continent, either from a charitable ‘let’s help’ perspective or from … development,” he says. “What was missing was the type of commercial capital that had a real impact in Asia,” where investments not only gained high returns but “ended up doing a lot of good.”

“This was one of the few geographies left where you can accomplish great commercial returns and fantastic impact at the same time. We set up the business with that in mind.

“My goal has always been to leave each community or situation in which I am involved better than I found it.”
Africa, he says, is “the last frontier.” It has 54 countries and a fast-growing population — now at 1.3 billion — of primarily young, urban consumers. But too many people still view the continent through a derogatory lens, Okello says.

“The greatest returns and the greatest impact have always happened in places where people initially don’t want to go to,” he says. “The challenge to Africa is that a lot of people get one skewed view, and then it’s too difficult to work through that from thousands of miles [away] to say, ‘OK, I want to get invested.’”

Okello has taken on the push for investment in Africa with a deliberate focus — as he has with other issues. In primary school in Uganda, he helped outlaw caning. His freshman year at Swarthmore, he became the guardian of three of his adolescent sisters and worked to support them.

“My goal has always been to leave each community or situation in which I am involved better than I found it,” says Okello, who is on the board of an organization that develops young leaders. “I believe that we have what is probably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be a part of or help drive monumental positive changes across Africa.”