Smarter Mobility Africa Fleet Summit

Investment Officer for Southern Africa, Untapped Global

Caitlin Craig is the Investment Officer for Southern Africa on Untapped Global’s all-female investment team. Originally from Canada and now based in Cape Town, South Africa, Caitlin co-leads Untapped’s CAPEX investment fund, deploying Smart Asset Financing across Africa and other emerging markets. Previously, she worked in Nigeria with She Leads Africa, launching accelerators for women run businesses across the African continent, and has also consulted global brands on their innovation strategies in London, UK.  

Research Director, Frost & Sullivan Africa 

Craig Parker has over 15 years’ experience in economic analysis and consulting in Africa targeted at providing companies strategic insight for expansion into emerging markets. He has been involved in the mobility and logistics sectors for a number of years, with specific focus on new technologies impacting these markets. Currently he is Research Director for Frost & Sullivan Africa, heading up the local teams in research and consulting. Craig holds a Master’s Degree in Economics from Stellenbosch University in South Africa.  

Director of Energy and E-mobility, Rubicon 

Director of Energy and E-mobility at Rubicon, Greg has gained 23 years’ experience in the industrial and renewable technology sectors focused on automation, renewable energy, and e-mobility. He has worked on many automotive sector projects for new vehicles with various OEM’s as well as renewable energy projects across Africa. He is passionate about sustainability and technology to solve mankind’s need for energy, food, water, and mobility. He is currently focused on the rollout of EV charging infrastructure for various vehicle OEM’s, private networks, and a Rubicon funded EV charging network.  

Head of Business Development, Centre of Excellence for Low Carbon and Fuel Cell Technologies – (Cenex)  

Keith is a postgraduate qualified social scientist with over thirty years’ experience in sustainable development, low carbon mobility, environmental policy and programme delivery, in the UK, Europe, East and West Africa, Thailand, Uruguay and India. He was part of the UK official delegation to the UN World Summit Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2001. Cenex is a leading independent, not for profit organisation providing advice and support on electric and hydrogen vehicles and the associated energy infrastructure to the public and private sectors. Cenex runs Europe’s premier Low Carbon Vehicle Event – LCV, manages the UK National Chargepoint Register and is the main technical advisor on electric vehicle charging to the UK Government. At Cenex he has helped to develop a range of low emission vehicle and EV charging programmes and has forged new relationships with the private sector and the European Commission, delivering clean air and low carbon mobility solutions. He has expert knowledge of EU and UK innovation funding and low carbon/low emissions public policy. He has recently led on the development of a new Global Sustainable Mobility Partnership that brings together not for profit organisations to support the global transition to zero emission transport.  Keith has also been actively involved in Cenex’s groundbreaking work on vehicle to grid systems, enabling vehicle batteries to discharge back into the building and grid to create additional value. Keith has previously worked for E.ON, delivering their sustainable cities programme, and for Birmingham City Council, leading on environmental programmes, climate change and energy. He was awarded Fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts and Technology in 2009 in recognition of his work on tackling climate change.   

Divisional Sales Manager, the division Smart Infrastructure in Siemens Ltd 

Mr. Marco Rahner is a divisional Sales Manager for the division Smart Infrastructure in Siemens Ltd based in Midrand, South Africa. He gained his professional experience in projects worldwide over the last 19 years with Siemens. He started as a commissioning engineer and Project Manager for Substation Automation Projects. After that for six years Mr. Rahner was Technical Sales Consultant and Sales manager in headquarters responsible for the Cluster ASEAN and Pacific, as well for countries in the Middle East and South Africa. Mr. Rahner has experience with the whole product portfolio of Siemens Energy Automation and Building Products. He is a specialist for Substation Automation, Power quality and Distribution automation. He drives the topics of Energy Efficiency, Smart buildings, Microgrids and Future grids including eMobility within Siemens for Southern and Eastern Africa.  

Technical Executive and Head, Green Riders 

Rory Engelbrecht is the technical executive and heads up the technical department at Green Riders. He has a background in mechanical and electrical engineering with a National Certificate in Mechanical. He is trade tested with a red seal in mechanical fitting and machining.

Rory was the owner and director of Alphega Engineering, a company that manufactured all sorts of projects for the mining, railway and mechanical sectors and which specialised in steel fabrication, machining and CNC turning as well as plasma cutting. He was also a member of and site supervisor in the construction of the TBM of the Gautrain in Johannesburg, along with the installation and build of all electrical infrastructure.

Rory has a great deal of experience in test and measurement equipment and has spent 3-4 years in the battery industry, gaining invaluable knowledge and skills in battery technology and the EV mobility market. As a youngster, Rory spent most of his time on a BMX or MTB, cruising the streets of his neighbourhood. Rory was brought on board from the start of Green Riders and has been part of the family since day one. With extensive trial and error, he has helped Green Riders to achieve first-to-world success in the EV mobility world.

Chairman, Green Riders

Richard Clarke is the Chairman of Green Riders. As a former Chairman of the Direct Selling Association of South Africa and having successfully built and sold one of the country’s largest direct selling companies with over 25,000 salespeople, Richard has vast experience when it comes to creating income earning opportunities. This bodes well for his vision to empower Delivery Riders in the e-mobility space in Africa. After a career in Direct Selling, Richard shifted gears and developed one of the largest YouTube businesses worldwide with over 2.3 billion lifetime views and 5.8 million subscribers in only 5 years. With his experiences in developing South African communities, and excelling in the online space, it is clear Richard thrives on scaling businesses for maximum output and efficiency. Richard believes that the time is right for e-mobility in Africa, and he aims to bring about the necessary change within the fulfilment and delivery sectors, whilst improving the lives and incomes of thousands of Delivery Riders. These industry sectors will be significantly disrupted and reshaped by e-mobility over the next two years, and Green Riders intends to be a leading force in establishing this impactful trend.  His approach is a business model which uplifts communities, saves businesses money and addresses climate change in the pollution heavy motor delivery industry.

Director: Smart Mobility, Royal HaskoningDHV 

Bongani is a dynamic and driven trailblazer, whose career has spanned across multiple sectors multidisciplinary engineering, particularly Infrastructure, Energy and Oil & Gas. Her skills and passions include Strategy Development and Execution, Enterprise Leadership, Business Development, Transformation, Business Management and Corporate Governance.  

Policy manager, Opibus 

The policy manager at Opibus, Alex is a well-seasoned professional with a passion to realizing electric mobility for Kenya. He has a deep understanding of the policy landscape for motorcycle assembly in Kenya, which combines sectors including industrialisation, finance, energy and the environment. 

Founder, Electric Drive Africa 

Dr. Remeredzai Joseph Kuhudzai has been involved in the energy and transport sectors for 14 years with both Lead and Team roles in Innovation, Partnerships, Strategy, Business Development & Sales and Research & Development. His work has been covering Electric Vehicles, Battery systems, Distributed Energy Generation Systems with application in Commercial & Industrial Solar Systems, Hybrids Systems including Micro grids & Minigrids in grid connected and off grid environments. He has built exceptional links with international networks and OEMS in the electric vehicle space over several years as well as strong network in the solar, battery storage and energy materials space giving him a unique understanding of the global and African EV market. He has also led the development of new markets and partnerships in the solar space in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Kenya for a company that has now installed well over 20 MW of distributed solar systems in the commercial solar space.  

Warren is an sustainability professional passionate about Africa’s transition to clean transport. An engineer by training, he is a Certified Energy Manager and Certified Measurement and Verification Professional. He sits at the board of AEMDA https://aemda.org, a pan-African industry platform for Emobility companies in SubSahara Africa with a network of over 20 companies at different stages in the continent’s electric vehicle value chain. 

Electrical Engineer, The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research

Renesh Thakoordeen provides a wide range of technical expertise in the field of electrical engineering with overlaps in a number of related fields. Corrective and preventative maintenance in power generation, energy storage, electrical distribution, excitation, switchgear and lighting systems has been his forte. He has formed part of many refurbishment and installation teams including during the handover period from Voith-Fuji to Eskom for the Ingula Pumped-Storage Scheme Project, previously known as the Braamhoek Project.   

Towards the end of 2021 he was recruited into CSIR’s Energy Centre to be the Energy Storage Testbed Supervisor to create a hub of battery and energy storage testing in Sub-Saharan Africa. He closely works with the CSIR counterpart, VITO (Flemish Institute for Technological Research) in Belgium in delivering and running this project. At present, the project requires establishment of a lab to receive equipment from internationally sourced suppliers.    

In 2015 he joined the Ingula Project as a maintenance technician where he assisted in the preparations of the relevant units to commercial operation. A notable refurbishment was after a stator, rotor and shaft were catastrophically damaged during testing. He formed part of the recovery and salvage team where the unit was eventually repaired and replaced. Safety measures and procedures were then put in place to prevent recurrence where his input was vital. This input was further extracted and implemented to prevent multi-unit trips at Ingula Pumped-storage schemes. He developed numerous work packages and project plans, along with bill of materials required for 18/36 monthly outages and retro-fitment projects.   

Additionally, he ensured that the plant was always Grid Code compliant and also black start/self-start ready by ensuring that testing was carried out with satisfactory results. Service level agreements with Eskom distribution and transmission were included in his developmental capacities. Overall department competence was maintained by knowledge dissemination and both formal and informal training.   

He maintained emergency systems, re-designed and implemented to ensure seamless transitions and safe working environments. Part of these emergency systems included the maintenance of battery systems such the main plant battery and various UPS’s at various locations within the plant itself. One of these systems is the lighting system where, in an underground power station is vital.   

Through his tenure at Eskom, safety was paramount and this is demonstrated by development of isolation, de-isolation procedures and work instructions.   

At Drakensberg Pumped-Storage Scheme, as maintenance technician, he demonstrated much of his technical competence. He took ownership of the liquid starter and excitation system which he further used as a BTech project, where a design to fully automate the system was developed. In this project, his skills in AUTOCAD and programming in various languages cannot be overstated.  

Renesh’s ability to transfer and communicate knowledge to high school students can be seen in his stint at Penguin tutoring during the period of February 2011 and March 2013. He was able to motivate the students assigned to him to excel beyond their believed capabilities. 

Chief Revenue Officer, BasiGo

Moses Nderitu, an executive with over 25+ years of experience in leadership and managerial roles. As Chief Revenue Officer at BasiGo, Moses is responsible for guiding stakeholders on the strategy and business approach on the electrification of the Kenyan PSV sector as well as advising the business on the navigation of Kenya's transportation regulatory landscape. His philosophy is to introduce fresh perspectives and new techniques allow businesses to evolve and grow. Similar to BasiGo, my goal is to remain on the cutting-edge of advancements. His role as a dad inspires, motivates and drives him to bring valuable contributions to the team by identifying innovative approaches and improved solutions to business challenges. Moses an adventure biker is also passionate about hiking both of which he undertakes during his free time.