Group Management Profile

Shane Leas – CA (SA)

Group Chief Financial Officer

The company benefits greatly from Shane’s extensive experience and knowledge. He holds a BCom (Hons) in Accounting and is a registered member of the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants. He joined the Group in June 2021.

Prior to joining Select Advisors, Shane held the role of Group Financial Manager at Sun International Limited where he was responsible for managing the full financial function of the listed group. His responsibilities included the preparation of complex Consolidated Annual Financial Statements, managing the group’s central Treasury and Tax function, managing deadlines on various deliverables, forecasting, budgeting, presenting reports to the Audit Committee, providing feedback to JSE Analysts, implementing new IFRS accounting standards and more. He also served as Chairman of the group’s Technical Accounting Committee and was part of the team that navigated a “Covid-19 business restructure” and successfully executed various merger and acquisition locally and internationally as well as disposing of non-core investments and implementing a shared service model across the group. He is committed to bringing his wealth of experience to Select Africa and ensuring the financial stability of the company in the long term.

Wayne Faulds

Chief Executive Officer: Retail

Oxford Brooks accredited MBA, Diplomas in Marketing Management, International Treasury Management and Banking Regulation. Prior to joining Select Group in 2008, Wayne held the position of Divisional General Manager for UTi Group’s banking logistics division which focused on the distribution of credit/debit and transactional cards and cheque books. Prior to joining UTi, Wayne gained 20 years of experience in banking and microfinance as, amongst others, a dual General Manager of Non-Mortgage Housing and Customer Care with the Unifer Group (a microfinance provider in South Africa).

Anusha Naidu – CA (SA)

Corporate Finance

Anusha heads up Corporate Finance, including capital raising, structuring and investor relations at Select Africa, a pan African housing-focused microfinance institution. She is a South African Chartered Accountant with specialist financial services experience across local and international capital markets. Prior to joining Select in 2016, Anusha worked at various PricewaterhouseCoopers (“PwC”) global offices. She spent three years in PwC’s Banking and Capital Markets audit team in Johannesburg, where she led external audits on Standard Bank Group and FirstRand Treasury, as well as a four-month secondment to PwC Dubai. She also spent three years in PwC’s M&A Advisory team in London, where she led various buy-side and sell-side transactions for financial services clients, including private equity, hedge funds, investment banks, and retail banks. On her return to South Africa in 2015, she independently consulted to Old Mutual Investment Group in Cape Town for 6 months. Anusha is a guest lecturer on the University of Cape Town’s Department of Construction Economics & Management Property Portfolio Management, Property Finance and Investment programme and the Master of Commerce in Development Finance.

Theo van Rooyen

Chief Operating Officer: Retail

Prior to joining, Theo held the role of Area Manager at Finbond Mutual Bank where he was responsible for managing the total operational function of all branches in Gauteng. Theo has extensive Africa experience within Microfinance gained during his tenure at Blue Financial Services where he worked in countries such as Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Namibia.Theo holds a Bachelor of Commerce Degree in Banking and Economics.

Bheki Dlamini

Chief Executive Officer: Eswatini

Bheki has been with Select for over 15 years and has risen through the ranks on the back of consistent performances in the various portfolio’s he previously occupied, which has enabled him to gain vast experience in the microfinance industry. Prior being promoted to CEO, Bheki held the role of General Manager where he was responsible for the overall operational excellence, which include operational oversite, performance management, operational result analysis and oversite in the execution of company strategy. Bheki holds an Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT) qualification.

Completed a Senior Management Development Programme (SMDP).

Akuzike Kafwamba

Chief Executive Officer: Malawi

Akuzike brings with him sixteen years of experience in financial services including banking, investment management and lending.

Before joining Select, Akuzike was the Country Manager at Business Partners International. His role entailed leading investment transactions from deal flow generation, investment selection, due diligence review, structuring of investments and submission of investment proposals to investment committees; managing the quality and efficiency of the investment team; representing the company and its clients on boards of portfolio companies; implementing corporate governance disciplines in investee companies; management of day-to-day investment and portfolio operations; providing technical support to in-country investment team which included deal structuring, negotiation, implementation, post-investment management and exiting of investments; management of the investment portfolio quality within prescribed benchmarks; delivering impact through investment activity by deploying technical assistance support to investee companies; managing client relationships and resolving technical account queries; ensuring stakeholder alignment between head-office based service departments (accounts, HR, marketing, IT) and in-country team; providing oversight of investment activities aligned to impact requirements and ESG industry standards; providing accurate impact and operational data from investment operations to support stakeholder reporting requirements; engagement with various stakeholders and representing BPI in external engagements with impact professionals; training and development of the investment team related to due diligence, deal sourcing and post investment deal management; developing and reviewing training material in collaboration with the training unit; and staff recruitment.

Akuzike holds a Master of Business Administration Degree in International Business, and a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Humanities. He is studying towards a Diploma in Banking & Finance.

David Mataka

Chief Executive Officer: Uganda

David joins the Uganda based team and brings with him extensive experience in financial services and renewable energy technologies. He has significant experience in the microfinance industry having started his career at FINCA Uganda and later having held senior roles at Bayport Financial Services, Tujijenge Microfinance and most recently, Hofokam. His expertise lies in strategic & operations management, developing a culture for a productive workforce, managing stakeholder relationships, resource mobilisation and building & improving processes for efficiency.

Prior to joining Select, David held the position of Executive Director at Hofokam Microfinance where he turned around the organisation from loss-making to profit-making for the years’ 2021 and 2022. His role entailed supporting the Chief Executive Officer in strategy formulation & management of the day-to-day operations of the business; reviewing the strategic direction of the organisation to position it as a leading provider of Microfinance Services to micro-entrepreneurs & farming communities in the Western Region; review of the organisation’s structure to align roles & responsibilities focusing on results for high performance that led to an increase in employee productivity from 50% to 70%; revising the cost structure to suspend amongst others, loss-making products and services, and reduce operating expenses (they suspended borrowings in foreign currency that increased the returns on assets & equity by 50%, enabling the institution to post profits for 2021); designing policies & supporting tools for the timely identification, monitoring & mitigation of risks through a weekly scan of the control environment that not only improved compliance to policies but resulted in a 15% improvement in the quality of the portfolio; conducting process reviews to identify & eliminate areas of wastage that led to reductions in costs & improvements in customer satisfaction; ongoing review of budgets & forecasts to facilitate timely action towards limiting any material variances; fundraising through engagements with both new & existing funders (he secured financing of UGX4 billion to support the recovery of micro-entrepreneurs following the COVID-19 pandemic, in addition to debt financing from commercial investors of UGX10 billion to support business growth); engaging with stakeholders regarding challenges faced by the Microfinance Sector that led to a review of the tax regime in March 2023 and efforts towards de-risking the sector through the use of Credit Reference Bureaus to support information sharing; staff performance management and Board Engagements.

David holds a Master of Business Administration Degree, a Bachelor of Science Degree in Financial Management and a Higher Diploma in Marketing. He is a Certified Microfinance Expert (“CME”) and a Certified Risk Management Expert (“CRME”).

Seabata Ntelo

Chief Executive Officer for Lesana Lesotho Limited

Seabata joins the Lesotho based team and brings with him over twenty years of experience in financial services both in Lesotho and working with company subsidiaries in various other countries across the continent.

Seabata was previously Chief Operating Officer at Nedbank Lesotho where he was responsible for the bank’s overall performance in line with the strategy and for supporting theManaging Director with the establishment and optimisation of the bank’s operations.

Prior to this, Seabata had a fourteen year career at the Central Bank of Lesotho (“CBL”) where he ultimately held the role of Director of Operations.

Some key achievements for Seabata include the following:

• He was nominated as part of a team of Consultants commissioned by the Macroeconomic & Financial Management Institute of Eastern & Southern African (MEFMI) to undertake an extensive Impact & Needs Assessment Study on MEFMI member countries.
• He was instrumental in the establishment of the National Payment System of the CBL.
• While at the CBL, he was involved in developing the regulations currently being used to  regulate financial institutions in Lesotho, including Microfinance Institutions.

Seabata holds a Master of Arts Degree in Accounting & Finance, a Bachelor of Commerce Degree in Accounting and has completed a Senior Management Development Programme.