::: ECIAfrica - Advancing Human Prosperity :::

ECIAfrica Executive Management

Dr Claudia Manning, Managing Director

Claudia Claudia is a development practitioner with many years of experience in the South African development arena. She has worked in management and governance positions in both the private and public sector.

In her capacity as Executive Director of Sangena Investments, she was responsible for a wide range of advisory assignments, spanning various development issues such as the financing of municipal infrastructure; local economic development, Public Private Partnerships in infrastructure delivery; Black Economic Empowerment and other mechanisms to enhance economic and social impacts of infrastructure projects; as well as regional development and integration programmes such as the Spatial Development Initiative (SDI) programme. Clients include Government departments such as National Treasury, the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Trade and Industry; various private financial institutions; the World Bank; and local and traditional authorities (including the Royal Bafokeng Nation).

Claudia serves as a non-executive director for a number of South African companies, including the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), where she also serves on the Board’s Credit and Investment Committee; the DBSA Development Fund, where she also chairs the Risk Committee; SSI Engineers and Environmental Consultants and Roadcrete Africa. She is also a member of the Presidential BEE Council.

Claudia previously served as an investment officer in the DBSA’s Private Sector Investments Unit (PSI), where she was responsible for the provision of finance to private companies investing in industrial infrastructure in South and Southern Africa, in particular through Public Private Partnerships. Her responsibilities included sourcing of new projects, conducting due diligence exercises, identifying legal, financial, technical and other risks, devising mitigating strategies to manage these risks; structuring the financial and other aspects of the transaction; obtaining management and Board approval; negotiating with clients; and finalizing contract documentation. Claudia spent two years contracted to the Department of Trade and Industry as a manager of the Spatial Development Initiative programme. Reporting to the Minister of Trade and Industry, the position entailed identifying and scoping high priority investment projects and promoting these to potential investors internationally and locally. The position required high level co-ordination between government (at local, provincial and national level), relevant local stakeholders (business, trade unions, and other non-government bodies) and private investors. Claudia was responsible for conceptualizing and managing multiple feasibility studies on various issues, which included inviting bids from consultants, evaluating them and awarding and managing successful bidders.

Claudia started her professional career as a researcher into the Small and Medium Enterprise sector and published a number of articles based on her research in the 1990’s. Claudia holds M Phil and D Phil Degrees from the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, UK.

■ DAI Washington, Washington DC (close)
DAI Washington traces its origins to 1970, when three graduates of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University combined their savings, aspirations, and career goals to establish a consulting firm in Washington, D.C., focusing on market-based approaches to economic development. DAI Washington's founders were bold and persistent. They named the company “Development Alternatives, Inc.”—now known simply as DAI—to emphasize their commitment to innovation and new ways of solving problems. In the late 1970s, DAI took the key findings from this research and applied them to the design of more than a dozen rural development projects for USAID, our principal client. By 1980, we had competed successfully for project implementation contracts in Sudan, Congo, Tanzania, and Indonesia, and placed long-term and short-term advisors at remote locations in all four countries. These contracts increased our revenue, allowed us to expand our technical knowledge, and enhanced our capacity to support, supervise, and communicate with projects on a 24-7 basis across the globe.
Since 1970, DAI has worked in 150 developing and transition countries. Today, 350 DAI staff work at our Bethesda head office (just outside Washington, D.C.) and many more are on assignment at project sites in more than 60 countries. Our contract portfolio is diverse, covering technical disciplines across the spectrum of economic, social, and institutional development, including crisis mitigation and stability operations, democratic governance and public sector management, agriculture and agribusiness, private sector development and financial services, economics and trade, HIV/AIDS, avian influenza control, water and natural resources management, and energy and climate change.
Many of these contracts are implemented in very challenging environments, including African, Middle Eastern, and Central Asian countries emerging from political or military conflict.
At the end of 2005, the DAI Employee Stock Ownership Plan became the sole owner of the company's stock, resulting in a structure that aligns DAI's financial health with the long-term retirement savings of our employees. We treasure our independence, and believe that it allows us to serve our clients' interests and foster sustainable development outcomes wherever we are working.
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■ DAI Europe, London (close)
DAI Europe provides international development and transition consulting services to bilateral and multilateral donors, governments, and private sector clients throughout the world. Founded by Graham Bannock as Bannock Consulting in 1984, the firm is now fully integrated into DAI, one of the largest development companies in the world. For more than 20 years, our London-based staff have been providing innovative solutions to complex development and transition problems in public sector governance and private sector development and finance. Recently, we expanded into conflict mitigation and recovery, agriculture and rural livelihoods, and finance work. As part of DAI, we bring to bear for our European government and private sector clients the massive talent, resources, and project management and support systems of DAI. We develop tailored solutions for our clients, underpinned by proven approaches and methodologies in areas as diverse as the platform approach to public sector reform, functional reviews, change management, small and medium-sized enterprise finance and microfinance, and credit scoring.
- DAI Europe employs superior technical and managerial practitioners and consultants worldwide
- DAI Europe's project management is based on systems that have proved their effectiveness in the world's largest development projects, so we can manage complex risks and mobilize a wide range of resources quickly and reliably
- DAI Europe acts as the European platform for the entire DAI organization, enabling us to provide a broad range of development and transition consulting services
- DAI Europe is a thought leader in diverse professional fields, but grounds this thought leadership in deep practical experience and expertise from around the world on complex policy and implementation problems
- DAI Europe helps clients achieve concrete results and accelerate the achievement of development outcomes -- we aim to have a lasting impact, even in the most demanding environments.
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■ DAI Pakistan, Islamabad (close)
DAI began working in Pakistan in 1982 and formalized its corporate presence there with the launch of DAI Pakistan in 2009. Our Islamabad-based team manages DAI’s marketing and business development initiatives countrywide, and assists in the design and implementation of projects.
DAI’s work history in Pakistan includes economic and agricultural development, water and irrigation management, microfinance, narcotics awareness and control, fiscal decentralization, and legislative strengthening. Clients include the U.S. Agency for International Development, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, the Japan International Cooperation Agency, and the U.K. Department for International Development.
DAI therefore taps a wealth of experience and professional and personal relationships in Pakistan. In implementing more than 30 long- and short-term assignments in country, we have helped Pakistani leaders connect with their constituents and budget more wisely, assisted citizens and journalists to participate more attentively in civic affairs, and helped farmers grow more productive crops, among other results. We are currently executing projects in some of Pakistan’s most peaceful cities and villages, as well as in its most challenging areas, where we draw on years of experience working in conflict-prone environments and in the context of counterinsurgency.
DAI Pakistan is staffed by Pakistanis whose development experience reaches from the country’s grassroots to its senior levels of government and the donor community. They have access to the local resources and connections to the broader institutions and networks that can be engaged to facilitate development projects on the ground. Seamlessly integrated into DAI’s global organization, they bring the full weight of DAI’s project management and technical expertise to bear on the full spectrum of Pakistan’s development challenges.
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■ DAI Palestine, Ramallah (close)
For 15 years, DAI has been continuously engaged in meeting the development challenges of the West Bank and Gaza. In 2004, DAI formalized its corporate presence in the West Bank and Gaza by opening DAI Palestine, a Palestinian-registered, Palestinian-run branch of DAI based in Ramallah. Today, we continue to promote the economic and social development of the Palestinian people, building on a solid foundation of flagship projects for donors such as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the U.K. Department for International Development (DFID), and the World Bank.
The key to our success is Palestinian leadership and technical expertise supported by the global talent, state-of-the-art management systems, and financial resources of the DAI organization. Deeply rooted in the Palestinian Territories, our in-country staff understand the complex historical and political terrain through which they must navigate, so they avoid the pitfalls that bedevil less knowledgeable and experienced firms. We also understand the centrality of economic development to improving Palestinian livelihoods, alleviating poverty, and setting the stage for broader social and political progress. Most important, we have established strong bonds of trust and respect with all of the actors critical to the execution of development projects. We have done this by providing innovative yet practical solutions backed by the kind of professional and responsive project management needed to meet the unique political and economic challenges of the Palestinian context.
Today, DAI Palestine provides an important project management and marketing platform for DAI in the Middle East. We have taken on a new generation of project work, challenging Palestinians to take development into their own hands. DAI remains committed to the notion that in a professionally managed and sensitively executed development context, the West Bank and Gaza offer fertile ground for economic growth and promising terrain for careful investment — both domestic and international. We have upheld that commitment in our own company and our projects continuously for almost 15 years. It is on this foundation that we look forward to vigorous engagement with the Palestinian people in the years to come.
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