Claudia Manning

Managing Director, Johannesburg office | claudia_manning@dai.com

Claudia Manning was a student, political, and community activist for most of her younger years in South Africa, so when the South African government became a democratic one, it was obvious to her that she should work in development. Claudia began as a policy advisor for small and medium-sized enterprises, working closely with the newly constituted government. After completing her doctorate at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, she worked on the Department of Trade and Industry’s Spatial Development Initiatives Programme, managing a number of development corridors that sought to accelerate investment into priority regions. She later joined the Development Bank of Southern Africa as an investment professional in the bank’s project finance unit, financing various public-private partnerships in the region, including the multibillion-dollar Sasol Gas pipeline bringing gas from Mozambique to South Africa. She later co-founded and ran a small investment company, Sangena Investments, which acquired shares in a number of listed and unlisted companies. Claudia joined DAI as Managing Director in 2010, and serves as a nonexecutive director on a number of boards, including the state-owned Development Bank of Southern Africa.

• D.Phil., Sussex University, England
• M. Phil., Sussex University, England

“I love the fact that through the programmes we implement, we can transform the lives of marginalised people by altering the way they can interact with the economies in which they live and work.”

— Claudia Manning