Managing Partner
ORI’s Founder and Managing Partner, Erastus Kibugu, is based in ORI’s Home Office in Kampala and the firm's Nairobi Office. Since ORI’s beginnings in 2014, he has led the delivery of a range of client engagements, including strategy development, market analysis and industry competitiveness research, commercial advisory, capital raising, and investment consulting, as well as impact evaluations and other learning projects related to project design and implementation.
He brings a deep understanding of the business, policy, and investing frameworks required to inspire the confidence of different investor classes – including those seeking competitive market-based returns on their investments and donor agencies/ philanthropic investors seeking developmental and social impact. This expertise is grounded in his extensive experience designing and managing long-term on-the-ground economic growth and trade projects, delivering management consulting engagements, advising industry-leading impact funds on social and development outcomes, and serving on the investment committees of impact funds and the Boards of global social enterprises.
Before ORI, Erastus was the Country Director for the U.S. based NGO TechnoServe, Inc. in Uganda, where he built from the ground up an impactful and diversified multi-million dollar program that applied market-based approaches to poverty reduction. This ambitious program, funded primarily by large donors, included: agricultural productivity and market access initiatives in various value chains and market systems; corporate co-investment projects bringing together global private foundations and multinational companies; and broad-based socio-economic development projects, including women's economic empowerment and youth economic opportunity initiatives.
Erastus is internationally recognized as a thought leader in Africa’s economic transformation.