Our people
Farm Africa trustees
Farm Africa is governed by a board of trustees who bring together a wide range of relevant skills and experience from the UK and eastern Africa.
Amar Inamdar
Chair
Amar works with businesses and entrepreneurs to imagine, create and grow markets that address our biggest social and environmental challenges. He brings a lifetime commitment to sustainable development. He is a fund manager and board member with experience of investing and advising portfolios of fast-growing and high-impact companies.
He leads KawiSafi Ventures – a private investment fund created by Acumen – that is focused on accelerating a just climate transition. Prior to leading KawiSafi, he managed a global investment portfolio of high-risk, high-impact projects for 10 years at the International Finance Corporation and the World Bank before joining the new business team at Royal Dutch Shell to drive growth in domestic energy markets. He graduated from the University of Oxford and has a PhD from the University of Cambridge. A TED speaker with 1.7M views, his work on sustainable investing has been featured in Forbes, Bloomberg and FastCompany.
Nick Allen
Vice Chair
Nick Allen
Vice Chair
Nick is a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge; from 2008 to 2018 he was the Bursar. Before 2008, he had a career at Unilever in finance, risk management and general management.
He spent ten years working with businesses in Africa and lived for five years in Zimbabwe. His last two jobs in Unilever were the CFO of the UK business, then Managing Director of Unilever’s venturing & innovation group. He is a Trustee of Book Aid International and Senior Treasurer of the Footlights.
Nick Allen
Vice Chair
Keith Pickard
Treasurer
Keith Pickard
Treasurer
Keith is a chartered accountant with more than 30 years’ experience in finance roles, including 14 years as CFO for HICL Infrastructure plc.
He has a background in corporate finance, project finance, investment management and financial management. His interest in African development began early in his career as Head of Finance for Concern in Mozambique. He is a Council member and Fellow of the ICAEW and Treasurer for The Royal School of Needlework.
Keith Pickard
Treasurer
Ken Caldwell
Ken Caldwell
Ken has wide experience of international development and humanitarian issues, primarily from an international NGO perspective.
His executive roles have included serving as Deputy Director of VSO, International Programmes Director of Save the Children, and Executive Director of WaterAid International, and his non-executive roles have included serving on the Boards of BOND, the Institute of Development Studies, and Westminster Foundation for Democracy. Ken has also worked as advisor to several global INGOs, especially in relation to the global board’s role in strategy, governance, and impact monitoring. He is currently a member of the global board of BRAC and Chair of BRAC UK, and a trustee and Chair of the Programme Committee at Oxfam GB.
Ken Caldwell
François Jay
François Jay
François has been involved in Africa’s development for 35 years. He currently runs Ebano Finance, a company designed, since 2016, to link equity investors and African companies / European companies targeting the African market.
Previously, he worked for The French Development Agency (AFD) (2005-2015); he ran Afrique Initiatives (1999-2004) Рan investment company created and chaired by then French Prime Minister Michel Rocard, to invest in equity in African SMEs. Fran̤ois has also served as special advisor to two successive French Ministers involved in cooperation with Africa. He was nominated a Global Leader for Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum in 2001 and has been named Knight of the French Merit Order.
François Jay
Julian Marks
Julian Marks
Julian Marks is Group Managing Director of Barfoots, an international farming business producing vegetables across the world mainly for UK customers.
After a number of years as a British Army Officer, he has enjoyed roles in primary industries including Forestry and Timber, Agriculture and Horticulture, including a period living in East Africa producing salads and vegetables on the slopes of Mount Kenya. Julian has been a supporter of the Farm Africa Food for Good campaign for the last ten years alongside the Barfoots team. He has been a team member on the Kilimanjaro, Ngorongoro and Mt Elgon treks.
Julian Marks
Caroline Miller Smith
Caroline Miller Smith
Caroline Miller Smith is head of the EMEA Energy, Infrastructure Project and Asset Finance Group at White & Case LLP and is based in the firm’s London office.
She is recognised by Chambers & Partners UK as a top-tier infrastructure, project development and project finance lawyer. She is a former chair of the White & Case Global Women’s Initiative and a member of White & Case’s diversity committee. From 2018 to 2022 she was a member of the Infrastructure Exports UK board at the Department of International Trade. In Africa, she has led deal teams on many significant transactions, including in Mozambique, Malawi, Kenya and Egypt.
Caroline Miller Smith
Shiru Mwangi
Shiru Mwangi has over 25 years of experience across global markets, corporate banking and impact investing in Africa and the US. She brings deep expertise in agriculture finance, investment strategy, portfolio management and capital allocation.
She was most recently Chief Investment Officer at Gather Ventures, and previously East Africa Director at Acumen Fund and Head of Agriculture Debt Financing for Africa at responsAbility, where she led debt financing to agribusinesses sourcing from smallholder farmers across 11 African countries. She currently serves on the investment committees of Kazana Fund, Verdant Frontiers Fintech Fund, and the A4FM Blended Finance Accelerator, and on the credit committee of Save the Children Global Ventures’ Generation Empowerment Fund. Alongside her investment work, Shiru runs a mango farm in Makueni County, Kenya, a hands-on venture that shapes her practical perspective on operations, markets, and sustainable growth. She holds an MBA from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and a BA from Amherst College.
Jane Ngige
Chair, Kenya board
Jane Ngige
Chair, Kenya board
Jane chairs Farm Africa’s Kenya Board and sits on Farm Africa UK’s Board.
Jane chairs the Warehouse Receipt Systems Council, is Vice Chair of the Agriculture Sector Network and is a non-executive board member of a large bank in Kenya. She spearheaded the establishment of the Kenya Horticultural Council, was CEO of the Kenya Flower Council; served as Deputy Coordinator of the Green Belt Movement and founded Biosystems Quality Management Consultancy. Prior to that she was a civil servant at the Kenya Bureau of Standards and the Kenya Trypanosomiasis Research Institute.
Jane Ngige
Chair, Kenya board
Josephine Olok
Chair, Uganda board
Josephine chairs Farm Africa’s Uganda board and sits on Farm Africa UK’s board. She is a non-executive director of United Bank for Africa Uganda, Britam Life Assurance Uganda and Vision Group, and co-founder and director of LumJo Consultants, a technology advisory and software company.
A Chartered Director and Qualified Risk Director®, she has more than 25 years’ experience in technology, digital transformation, governance and risk across banking, fintech, insurance, media, oil and gas, and international development, with executive leadership roles at Tullow Oil, Bank of Uganda, Barclays Bank, Equity Bank and the UN World Food Programme.
Ashley Thomas
Ashley Thomas became a Farm Africa trustee in July 2026. Ashley is a technology and impact leader with 20 years of experience dedicated to scaling global climate and sustainability solutions. She is currently serving as the Portfolio Lead for Sustainability at Google DeepMind in London, where she works to externalise and drive the social impact of DeepMind’s advanced technologies.
Previously, she was the Director of Climate Technology for the United States Development Finance Corporation, overseeing the strategy for $4.5 billion in annual investments. Her expertise in breakthrough innovation was further developed during her tenure as a Rapid Evaluator at Google X, where she incubated moonshot climate technologies. Her deep understanding of scaling impact was built over a decade in East Africa as an engineer and product manager, where she designed clean water and energy products that now serve over five million people in seven countries. Her academic contributions include publishing widely-cited research on atmospheric water generation in Nature, and her innovations have been featured in the Smithsonian and Nobel Prize museums. A Skoll and Pershing Square Scholar, Ashley holds a BSc in Mechanical Engineering from MIT, as well as an MBA and an MSc in Geography and Environment from the University of Oxford.
Vicky Unwin
Vicky Unwin
Vicky Unwin has had a long career, centred round her African roots, in both book and newspaper publishing.
She was Managing Director of  the education publisher Heinemann International and Publisher of the African Writers Series with authors such as Chinua Achebe & Ngugi wa Thiong’o; Enterprise Director of the Telegraph Group; Managing Director of PR Newswire and, latterly, Media Director for The Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development. In addition to Farm Africa, she is currently Trustee of Transform Drug Policy Foundation and a member of the Caine Prize Advisory Council. She is also the author of two books, Love & War in the WRNS and The Boy from Boskovice: a father’s secret life.
Vicky Unwin
