ECIAfrica Executive Management

Dr Claudia Manning, Managing Director

Claudia Manning’s career has spanned a wide range of roles, including the management and financing of infrastructure development projects in the public and parastatal sector, sourcing and financing of private investment transactions, and management and development consulting. She assumed the role of Managing Director of ECI Africa, a medium sized international development consulting company, in May 2010.

In her capacity of MD of ECI Africa, she manages a professional staff complement of around 50 people, working in most of the countries in the Southern African region. The company provides development solutions to a wide range of clients in the public sector, Development Finance Institutions, international donors as well as to private companies. ECI Africa specialises in Enterprise Development, Agribusiness and small holder farmer support, and has extensive experience of analysing value chains with a view to facilitating the opening up of company supply chains to small businesses.  

Claudia began her professional career as a policy adviser on SME development, working closely with the newly constituted democratic Government of South Africa. After completing her D Phil at Sussex University in 1996, she worked on the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI)’s Spatial Development Initiatives (SDI) Programme, managing a number of Development Corridors. She later joined the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) where she worked as an Investment professional in the Bank’s Project Finance unit, financing various Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects in the Southern African region, including the R8 billion Sasol Gas Mozambique pipeline.

Between 2003 and 2009 Claudia was Executive Director of an investment holding company that she co-founded, Sangena Investments, which acquired shares in a number of listed and unlisted companies.

Claudia is member of the Board of Directors of the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), as well as serving on the Board of the DBSA’s Development Fund. She also serves on several Board committees including the DBSA Credit and Investment Committee and chairs the DBSA Development Fund Risk Committee.

Claudia is a member of the Presidential BEE Advisory Council, appointed by the President to advise on matters pertaining to Black Economic Empowerment.

■ 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 Jordan, Amman (close)
DAI Jordan was launched in February 2009 as a logical outgrowth of DAI’s nearly 20-year history in the country and expanding presence in the region. In all, DAI has undertaken more than 20 short- and long-term projects in Jordan, ranging from cutting-edge work in the water sector to agricultural policy analysis; trade, investment, and enterprise support; economic reform; microfinance and business management assistance; and our most recent roles on the Sustainable Achievement for Business Expansion and Quality project (SABEQ) and the Instituting Water Demand Management in Jordan project (IDARA).
DAI Jordan’s role is to broaden and deepen DAI’s client relationships still further in Jordan and the region, working across clients and across the full range of DAI’s technical areas. Our Jordan office is led by Managing Director Jamal Al-Jabiri, who works shoulder-to-shoulder with DAI Palestine—DAI’s office in Ramallah—in support of regional initiatives. DAI Palestine provides financial and other infrastructure support to the Amman team.
Jamal Al-Jabiri joined DAI after a distinguished 11-year career with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in Jordan, most recently as Deputy Director of the Office of Economic Opportunities. Before joining USAID, he worked for 10 years at The Housing Bank in Amman.
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■ DAI Mexico, Mexico City (close)
In 2009, DAI formalized its corporate presence in Mexico by opening DAI Mexico, a Mexican-registered firm based in Mexico City. Throughout the 2000s, DAI helped Mexico develop an effective microfinance sector that now provides sustainable financial services to underserved urban and rural markets. In doing so, we helped both lenders and borrowers manage risk and contribute to local economic growth, and built the capacity of key Mexican government agencies to support the industry.
Building on these collaborations, DAI Mexico will design and manage projects in Mexico, initially focusing on microfinance and enterprise development but also exploring technical sectors where DAI has excelled globally for years: developing rural tourism and forestry resources, expanding irrigation and technical assistance in agriculture, promoting biodiversity, investing in clean rural energy, expanding sustainable fisheries, improving value chains, and tackling global warming.
DAI Mexico will also serve as a focal point for our development work in Latin America and the Caribbean, a region where we have a proud work history: helping Haitians to recover livelihoods destroyed by hurricanes, assisting Venezuelans to calm social tensions and sustain democratic institutions, supporting business development in Colombia’s small cities, spearheading watershed conservation in El Salvador, and promoting licit agriculture as an alternative to the coca economy in Bolivia, to cite just a few examples.
Since DAI’s founding in 1970, DAI’s employee owners have combined technical excellence with cultural knowledge and sensitivity to design and implement smart, sustainable development programs. DAI Mexico draws on this heritage to make real and lasting improvements in the lives of people in Mexico and the region.
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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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■ ECIAfrica, Johannesburg (close)
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