Zaki Raheem is a Director at DAI’s Sustainable Business Group. He is an enterprise development and entrepreneurship professional with 20 years of project design, research, training, mentoring, and advisory experience. He has engaged in extensive short-term consulting and long-term field work with MSMEs, startups and corporates throughout Asia (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Myanmar, Oman, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Timor-Leste, Uzbekistan), Africa (Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Somalia / Somaliland, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe), Latin America (Guatemala, Guyana, Nicaragua, Panama and Trinidad & Tobago), and North America (TechStars Accelerator in Washington DC, accelerator design and support in Mexico City, Permian Basin, and Alberta & British Columbia).
He is presently serving as a Technical Director for global SME & entrepreneurship initiatives with Mastercard’s Center for Inclusive Growth (USA) and IKEA Foundation (East Africa). He supports the design, training curriculum development, mentorship, and impact investor engagement with a network of incubators, accelerators with a focus on agribusiness, climate innovation and local content. He has led market studies and value chain assessments in over 20 countries in the agribusiness, energy, manufacturing, financial services, and tourism sectors that have informed donor-funded MSME project designs with USAID, DFID, World Bank, and IFC. Before joining DAI, he engaged in related enterprise development activities with Earth Institute’s Millennium Cities Initiative, Chemonics, IRC, FINCA, AED, UNIDO, Plan International, CARE, Education Development Center, Practical Action, EcoVentures International (EVI), UN-Habitat, and Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) ESG advisory team.
He is an Adjunct Professor for Columbia University’s School of International & Public Affairs (SIPA) teaching a graduate-level Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) Development class. He serves as a mentor for entrepreneurs at the Kosmos Innovation Center in Ghana, the Guyana Accelerate-HER program and the #StartupColumbia social entrepreneurship competition; and as a technical lead for DAI’s engagement with the Global Accelerator Network (GAN) and Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE).
Zaki was one of the most humanistic and formidable independent thinkers, I was privileged to work with. His initiative and boldness, together with a co-leader Jeannette Bailey, created what became a powerful Institute program, BUILD. Their leadership skills and ability to navigate complex bureaucracies, with the University, and beyond, in the countries they successfully sought to serve, was impressive and inspired successive generations of my students. .