NEDPOWER - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- CEO
- FOUNDER
- Owner and Founder of NedPower Africa
Hieronymus (Jerome) Niessen is the owner and founder of NedPower Africa. He has a proven track record of close to 40 years of experience in advising, developing, managing and financing power projects worldwide, in particular renewables. From wind farms to solar farms to hydro power plants to gas fired power plants. Generation and Distribution. From utility scale to energy access.
Having worked most of his life in the emerging markets and the power sector, Mr. Niessen built a deep and wide network among DFIs, Multilaterals, Private Equity, Impact Investors, Developers, Governments, Utilities and other stakeholders in the sector, particularly in Africa.
Throughout his career Mr. Niessen has been advising well known clients such as the IFC, Blackrock, Infinity Power, AES, GVK Industries, Bechtel, Electricidad de Caracas, GWEC (Global Wind Energy Council), BBI Power and GreenMax Capital, on the development, financing or privatization of a wide variety of projects and sectors, mainly in the power sector.
Mr. Niessen was JCM‘s Head of Development for Africa and CEO of its two solar companies in Malawi (60 MW plus 20 MW (plus 5 MW BESS) in operations). JCM is a renewable energy developer (IPP) and is owned by a number of DFIs (Developmental Financial Institutions), including for example FMO and STOA. He is also a Senior Advisor to the Global Wind Energy Council ("GWEC") on Africa. Prior to JCM, he was the CEO of Serengeti (then called rAREH), a renewable energy developer (solar, wind and hydro) based in Nairobi and owned by a number of DFIs, including KfW and Norfund. Under his leadership, rAREH built a portfolio of five projects in operations, two under construction and a large number of projects (circa 300 MW) under development across SSA. Prior to rAREH he was a Principal Investment Officer with the IFC, working on Africa, Asia and Latin America. He is also the founder of NedPower US, which developed one of the earliest wind farms (20 MW) in India in the 1990s and the then largest wind farm (264 MW) (NedPower Mount Storm) in the Eastern US.
In addition to having been a developer for most of his life, Mr. Niessen has been with the World Bank and the IFC for some twelve years, most recently as a Principal Investment Officer working on infrastructure projects across SSA. Other regions he worked on were Latin America, Asia and the Middle East.
Mr. Niessen received a Masters in International Law from Leyden University in The Netherlands and a MBA from Baylor University in the US.
Winfred Wangari Kiarie has over 8 years' experience in banking, finance, and impact investment East and West Africa. She is a Kenyan.
She previously held the position of Director of Finance at Impact Water in Kampala-Uganda (an investee of KIVA). Impact Water delivers reliable, low cost water purification to schools in East Africa providing clean water to over 14 million students. The program reduces biomass consumption and a corresponding decrease in indoor air pollution as these safe water systems replace the need to boil water resulting in large carbon dioxide, methane, carbon monoxide, and particulate matter emission reductions. The use of carbon credits allows Impact Water to reduce the costs of its systems.
Prior to Impact Water, Wangari was an Investment Officer at responsAbility covering the financial services sector in East and South Africa. ResponsAbility is a leading Impact Investor, with over USD 4 billion of Assets under Management.
She holds a Master of Science in Finance from the University of Leicester (UK) and is a certified Risk Management Professional by the Global Association of Risk Professional (GARP).