EFA is a not for profit organisation which aims to develop and support innovations to promote small and medium sized enterprise development. This is intended to mitigate poverty by creating sustainable employment and improve agricultural productivity, which benefits rural livelihoods.
Our first initiative has been to create EFTA, an SME equipment leasing company in Tanzania. EFTA was set up to bridge the financing gap between $2,000 and $50,000. EFTA provides lease finance for equipment, which is repayable over three years. EFA has provided capital, expertise, management and other resource to develop EFTA from a start-up to a national business with offices in Moshi, Arusha, Mwanza, Bukoba, Mbeya and Morogoro. EFTA’s innovative approach was recognized by the G20 at the 2010 Seoul meeting, winning the G20 SME Finance Challenge.
EFA was founded in 2003 by Michiel Timmerman, Jeremy Lefroy, Michael Schluter and Paul Doye.
Our first initiative has been to create EFTA, an SME equipment leasing company in Tanzania. EFTA was set up to bridge the financing gap between $2,000 and $50,000. EFTA provides lease finance for equipment, which is repayable over three years. EFA has provided capital, expertise, management and other resource to develop EFTA from a start-up to a national business with offices in Moshi, Arusha, Mwanza, Bukoba, Mbeya and Morogoro. EFTA’s innovative approach was recognized by the G20 at the 2010 Seoul meeting, winning the G20 SME Finance Challenge.
EFA was founded in 2003 by Michiel Timmerman, Jeremy Lefroy, Michael Schluter and Paul Doye.
Jeremy Lefroy
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Jeremy was previously Member of Parliament for Stafford and Managing Director of African Speciality Products, which markets coffee and cocoa from East Africa and develops new businesses which add value to agricultural production. He returned to the UK in 2000 following 11 years as General Manager and Managing Director of the African Coffee Company Ltd in Tanzania.
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Paul Doye
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Paul was a director of Allia (formerly CityLife) established by the Relationships Foundation to issue Charity Bonds with the funds coming from corporate and private donors initially to provide capital for the creation of employment in high unemployment areas in the UK. The mechanism was developed by Allia. Paul was also a member of the UK Council of Africa Inland Mission International and is a former director of Charterhouse Bank advising listed companies.
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Simeon Galpert
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Simeon is an accountant, and has held senior finance and treasury positions at major companies including Guinness, Saatchi & Saatchi and WPP. He was most recently Director of Treasury, Tax and Risk Management at Guinness, before becoming an independent consultant. He has also undertaken consulting work for the IFC in East Africa on small business investment and performance monitoring.
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Afzal Amijee
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Afzal is a specialist with a strong operations, product and technology experiences in financial services. He is an adviser at Mbuyu Capital an Africa specialist fund manager and direct investment firm. He is a former product manager at PrecisionLender and an operating partner of Sun European Partners, $10bn private equity business and as CEO/CFO successfully turned around a payments venture and a data center business.
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Edward Plumbly
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Edward is an independent consultant. He has worked in corporate finance for nearly four decades, for the vast majority of that time for Nordic banks such as SEB Enskilda, Alfred Berg, Carnegie and latterly as Head of Equity Capital Markets for Handelsbanken.
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