Research and Technical Team
To operationalise the activities outlined above, PAFDI is expanding its team to include African economists, tax policy experts, lawyers, auditors, fintech developers, development finance and other specialists from across the continent. The core PAFDI IFF programme team comprises of:
Prof. Neissan Besharati is an adjunct professor (sustainability) at the Gordon Institute of Business School of the University of Pretoria and a senior technical advisor to the AUDA-NEPAD Policy Bridge Tank. He holds a PhD (Public Policy & Development Management) from University of Witwatersrand (South Africa). He is a senior research associate at several prominent think-tanks and visiting professor at a number of international universities. Dr Besharati has extensive experience as a development consultant working with multinational corporations (EY, PWC, Deloitte) and serving as a senior technical advisor to governments, philanthropies, bi-lateral and multi-lateral donors and regional organisations. He currently sits on various UN, World Bank, AU and OECD expert groups and committees. His areas of expertise include illicit financial flows, public and development finance, international development cooperation, monitoring and evaluation, emerging economies, public-private partnerships, South-South cooperation.
Ms Kathy Nicolaou-Manias is an economist specialised in Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs) and Public Finance. She led the IFF Policy Research Unit at the SA Financial Intelligence Centre, advising National Treasury from 2011 to 2016. She chaired the inter-departmental working groups on IFFs, bitcoin and cryptocurrency and represented SA in the OECD’s task team on Curbing Illicit Trade. Since 2017 she has consulted to the UNECA on IFFs and advised the SDG Technical Task Force on measuring IFFs. In 2020, she was appointed IFF course director at the UN African Institute for Economic Development and Planning. Ms Nicolaou-Manias has developed several risk assessment tools and served as advisor to the Gauteng MEC of Economic Development and the SA Social Security Agency. She holds a MCom (economics) from the University of Witatersrand (South Africa).
Mr James Karanja is an international tax expert based in Kenya who led the secretariat of Tax Inspectors without Borders, an OECD-UNDP initiative to curb IFF’s in developing countries. Prior to that he worked on tax reforms at the Kenya Revenue Authority, including formulating a national tax enforcement strategy and managing Kenya’s tax transparency. He has represented Kenya at international meetings and addressed conferences. His extensive regional experience includes working with the Tax Justice Network Africa, OECD Development Centre, GIZ and the Global Forum on Transparency Africa Initiative – on initiatives around information exchange and double taxation treaties. He is a previous chair of the ATAF technical committee on BEPS and an assessor with the Global Forum on Transparency in Albania. Mr Karanja is an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya and a member of the Law Society in Kenya (LSK). He holds a Masters degree in Public Policy and Management from Strathmore University and an LLB (Hons) from the University of Nairobi.
Mr Nsizwa Mutasa is a taxation specialist who has worked in academia, tax administration and corporate advisory. He is currently responsible for taxation at Ubombo Sugar Limited in eSwatini (an Illovo subsidiary). Prior to this he was a tax specialist at the eSwatini Revenue Authority responsible for developing and establishing technical training programmes. His regional work includes serving on the expert review panel of the ATAF’s Executive Master in Tax program for senior tax administrators and contributing to the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index. His particular interests are international taxation, tax policy and he has participated in international seminars and conferences in this field. He holds a Bachelor in Accounting from Rhodes University and a B Comm (hons) in Taxation from the University of Pretoria.
Ms Raesetje Sefala is an AI Research Fellow and a qualified Data Engineer. She holds a Computer Science Masters degree from the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa) with a special focus on Machine Learning. She has been technically involved in different complex Data Science projects from around the world that involve building innovative solutions while working with world renowned researchers in the field (Prof. Yoshua Bengio, Prof. Rayid Ghani and Dr. Timnit Gebru to name a few). Her focus is in the use of artificial intelligence to solve problems experienced by developing countries; creating and analysing datasets for machine learning use; designing and developing efficient machine learning pipelines for different types of datasets, and contributing to making better data and technologies that serve disadvantaged communities.
Mr Siqhamo Mashologu is a technology expert in the field of data warehousing design and business intelligence with a B. Comm (Economics & Information Systems) from Wits University (South Africa). He has implemented data and business intelligence solutions in a wide range of sectors including financial services, telecoms, retail and FCMG. Most of his career has been in consulting, having worked with major technology firms such as Accenture, ITB and Microsoft. He has extensive experience operating in SQL, PowerBI, Unix, Tableau, Sybase, Proclarity, IBM, Oracle and other cloud technologies. His career highlights include building data warehouses which have been in use for over 20 years.
Ms May Jones is a full-stack software engineer with a focus on data engineering and analysis, holding an MEng in Computing from Imperial College London (United Kingdom). She has designed, implemented and maintained data warehouses, ETL processes and reporting solutions in various sectors – banking, retail and not for profit. She has worked with a variety of technology stacks including SQL Server, Oracle, Postgres, DynamoDB, Pyspark, AWS EMR, Unix, Tableau, Cognos, Python, Perl, Typescript and Vue.js.
Ms Sankari Reddy is a special advisor at the International Fund for Agricultural Development. She was a practicing attorney in both South Africa and Botswana for more than a decade. She holds a MSc in Comparative Law, Economics and Finance (cum laude) (Italy), a Bachelor’s of Commerce (Pretoria), a Bachelors of Law (Pretoria) and an Advanced Professional Diploma in International Taxation (APCIT) (Netherlands) and qualifications from the Chartered Governance Institute of South Africa (CGISA). She has acted for clients in a variety of sectors (including REIPP, property, retail, advertising and marketing) involving government, tax authorities, shareholders, employee and DFI disputes. Her areas of focus include King IV, companies law and administrative law. She has conducted impact and evaluation research work with FAO as well as PLAAS (University of Pretoria) and served as legal associate at Pan-African Investment and Research Services (PAIRS) working on illicit financial flows and ESG projects. She is a member of SABWiL (South African Black Women in Law), and the Institute of New Economic Thinking (INET) and has published on the impacts of COVID-19 on surveillance and compliance in South Africa.