Tariye Gbadegesin – MD/CEO, ARM Harith Infrastructure Fund Managers

With over twenty years of experience, Tariye is an investment professional who has led investments of over $3bn in large-scale energy, infrastructure and industrial projects.

She is currently the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of ARM Harith Infrastructure Fund Managers (Armhif), a joint venture between Asset & Resource Management Company Ltd (ARM), a Nigerian institutional investor with US$2.3 billion of assets under management and Harith General Partners (Pty) Ltd (Harith), a South African infrastructure fund manager with over US$1 billion under management. Armhif was the first equity infrastructure fund to be licensed by the Nigerian Securities and Exchange Commission under its recent infrastructure fund rules.

Gbadegesin was on the founding team to establish the Africa Finance Corporation (AFC), a pan African DFI with US$6 billion under management, where she led several of AFC’s investments in the sectors of power, transport, industrials and telecommunications infrastructure.

Tariye has served on boards of several large scale infrastructure projects in Africa, Amandi IPP a 200MW dual fuel combine cycle power plant in Ghana, 2016 IJG Deal of the Year, Main One Cable Company, a Pan-African sub-sea and ICT company, and has served on the board of Cabeolica S.A, a Cabo Verdean wind power IPP and an IFC-ranked top 10 PPP project in sub-Saharan Africa.

Gbadegesin is the Co-Chair, VCMI Steering Committee. With voluntary carbon markets poised to grow exponentially this decade, the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative (VCMI) aims to help ensure that credibility concerns are addressed so that these markets fulfill their potential to support the goals of the Paris Agreement.

VCMI will do this by working on a number of critical gaps in voluntary carbon market integrity – building solid foundations as the market scales. VCMI aims to support private sector climate action by developing guidance on the use of carbon credits and transparent claims, and promoting multi-stakeholder engagement and partnerships so that this translates into meaningful action on the ground.

VCMI will also support countries to access high-quality climate finance, working with governments and the United Nations Development Programme to establish VCM Access Strategies, a project to channel private finance from high-integrity voluntary carbon markets towards national climate priorities.

As co-chair of the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative (VCMI), Tariye believes that there is significant untapped potential within Africa to take the lead on deploying finance to create a greener future for the continent, while helping tackle the global climate crisis.

For her, Africa’s potential in the supply of high-quality carbon credits is vast. “Ghana, Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo are just a handful of countries that have proactively sought to build and scale their domestic carbon markets.” She said.