About the Founding Partner

As a native of Yamanashi, Japan, Ms. Mayumi Wakebe’s commitment to creating meaningful change in Africa began early in life. She gained firsthand experience on the ground, spending a year in Rwanda with an NGO supporting orphans and widows. Later on she spent several months in Ghana researching sustainable food security and technology development. She spent many more cycles learning about different regions and different challenges that people faced . These experiences shaped her conviction that Africa’s transformative future potential is best realized by empowering the next generation of entrepreneurs. She later reinforced this perspective through a decade in the global startup and venture capital ecosystem, including six years at two Japanese institutional VC firms where she contributed to portfolio companies achieving IPO and M&A exits. Ms. Wakebe has also made angel investments in Japan, the United States, and Africa, and engaged with more than 200 African founders to build a proprietary deal pipeline. She founded SENZO Capital to channel this experience and insight into an Africa plus-focused venture fund. With SENZO Capital foundation, she brings Japanese culture , technology, and enterprise resources to Africa’s future. By venture investments, she anticipates a materialization of social and economical wealth creation, sustainably. By investing in Africa’s people in the continent and outside Africa, she fully believes the future potential to realize financial and economic growth becomes a reality. 

Ms Mayumi holds an MSc in International Development from the University of Birmingham UK.