About Ngao Africa
Ngao Africa is a Nairobi firm that designs and builds strategic partnerships in Kenya and East Africa. Ngao means shield in Kiswahili, and the name describes what a well-made partnership does: it protects what each party brings, so that each can commit fully and go further together than it could alone. We work on partnerships where a great deal is at stake, usually those that will shape a company’s position in the region for a decade or more. We stay with them from the first map of the market to the months after signing.
Our work is led at a senior level and draws on more than ten years of experience in the region on cross-border acquisitions, development finance partnerships, sovereign and syndicated financings, capital markets and regulatory matters, together worth more than USD 800 million.
Our own expertise is in legal and strategic work: designing the partnership, structuring the transaction, negotiating the terms and planning the regulatory path. Where an engagement requires other expertise, such as finance, tax, technical, environmental or social specialists, we bring it in and coordinate it alongside your project managers, operations teams and decision-makers.
Who we work with
For an international company entering the region, we provide the understanding a board needs before it commits: who the credible partners are, how the market, the regulators, the counties and the communities actually work, and how the arrangement can be structured to survive a change in any of them.
For an East African company growing into a neighbouring market, we find and assess partners across the border. We set out the path through national rules and those of the East African Community and COMESA, and design partnerships that work in each country, bringing in counsel and specialists in each where the work needs them.
For an East African company meeting an international or regional partner, we help it present itself the way the other side’s board will assess it and recognize the full value of what it brings. We then help it negotiate terms on control, exclusivity, know-how and exit that protect what it has built.
For development finance institutions, government agencies, counties, chambers and business associations, we help turn introductions, programmes and investment pipelines into signed partnerships. That means finding and structuring the local partners, offtakers, co-investors and community arrangements that projects need before they can be financedh
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