Lionel Kadja
Regional Head – West Africa
Axel joined Technoserve in May 2018 after spending five (5) years at Cargill where he successfully contributed to the company’s sourcing strategy towards access to finance for cooperatives and trade digitalization. In particular, he initiated the Coop Academy project, a kind of Mini-MBA for Cooperative Managers. He also spearheaded the development of the first Truck leasing facility for cocoa cooperatives in Cote d’Ivoire, a joint IFC-Cargill project coined “Doni Doni” ( little by little) which was awarded Best Sustainability Initiative at the Food and Ingredients Europe Summit in Paris in 2015.
In 2015, Axel contributed to the setting up of the first digital cocoa purchasing company in Ghana, supporting daily e-transactions between 15,000 farmers and Cargill, Bank of Ghana and 2 Telecommunication companies. Axel started his career as auditor at Deloitte and then moved to the nonprofit sector in 2005 before stepping into the agribusiness area.
He holds Master’s degree in Accounting and Finance from the National Polytechnic Institute of Ivory Coast, Masters of Science in International Accounting from Toulouse Business School, and a Master of Business Administration from the Kellogg Business School.
Away from his professional duties, Axel has recently initiated Intell-Invest, a Research-based competition project that has the ambition to sharpen the problem-solving skills of students from top universities in Cote d’Ivoire. Since 2019, he is a pro-bono Lecturer in Business Strategy at the National Polytechnic Institute of Ivory Coast as well as Lecturer in Leadership on the Personal Development Programme (PDP) implemented at the Université des Lagunes in Abidjan.