Maria Nkhonjera

Maria joins SEI Africa as a Research Fellow, climate and finance. She is a development economist with over a decade of experience in analytical research, policy advocacy and programme leadership across southern and eastern Africa. Her work has focused on the intersection of finance for development, regional cooperation, and global governance as critical levers for Africa’s economic transformation.  

She has led and managed programmes on sustainable and development finance across philanthropy, think tanks, and policy institutes, while driving advocacy efforts that position African perspectives and priorities in regional and international fora, notably the Summit for a New Financing Pact, 4th International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4), IMF-World Bank Spring Meetings and UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COPs). Ahead of the first Africa Climate Summit (ACS1), she was seconded to the Office of Kenya’s Special Climate Envoy, where she coordinated the delivery of a White Paper on “Africa’s Priorities for an Equitable Reform of the Global Financial System.” Beyond her institutional roles, she has actively contributed to thought leadership, through international conferences, authoring book chapters and articles, including publications in the Mail & Guardian, Engineering News, Voice of America and the Kenyan Wall Street.

Maria holds a Master of Commerce from the University of the Witwatersrand and is an alumna of the SOAS University of London Future Leaders Programme, the New Structural Economics Summer School at Beijing’s Peking University, and the African Programme on Rethinking Development Economics (APORDE).