About Us

Africa has the opportunity to achieve food security for its people while also delivering high quality food products to the world.  Historically, agricultural products have been exported as raw material from Africa.  Value-add services are performed internationally.  As a result, much needed food products, jobs and income flows away from the continent.  IAP addresses this imbalance by developing sustainable primary agriculture production and food processing facilities pan Africa.

IAP’s grows and processes high quality, protein-rich food products that are produced and processed at our operations pan Africa.  We operate strict sustainability practices; organic soil regeneration, cover crop rotations and solar power for clean energy and efficiency.  We produce onions and corn at our farms.  We process fresh cashew nuts at our processing plants, sourcing directly from over 6,500 smallholder farmers.  We supply to our customers locally, regionally within Africa and globally.  IAP adheres to international food-safety standards across all our operations.  Our products are FDA (USA) approved and internationally food safety certified.

All IAP products, whether from our production farms or our processing plants, are traceable through Facilitrace®, our agriculture technology platform.  We provide our customers access to Facilitrace® so they can track their products in real time, with visibility and source data.

Our ownership and management team have decades of experience successfully developing and operating food-production, food-processing, logistics, and technology companies pan Africa and internationally.  Combined, our principals has owned, developed and sold over $600 million (USD) worth of company value over the last 30 years on four continents.

Our Business

IAP operates four distinct business lines:  Farm Production, Food Processing & Trading,  Facilitrace®and IAP Academy.

Our Management Team

Executive Chairman

Senior Advisor, Board of Directors

Director, Farm Development & Operations

Director, Impact & Community Development

Chief Financial Officer

Director, Corporate Finance

Director, Environmental & Quality Management

Director, Business Development USA

Senior Advisor, Agronomy & Commercial

Director, Agronomy

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Michael Banigan

Executive Chairman

Mike is a serial entrepreneur with extensive experience in the food, financial services, healthcare, and insurance industries. Mike envisioned and funded creative strategies then matured them into successful companies. Mike is the co-founder of IAP and the co-founder of Facilitrace, providing vision and direction to drive innovation in the food retail industry. He founded, developed and sold Afritex Ventures, a vertically integrated food products provider delivering value-added meals, seafood, seafood products, and food commodities under the Wild Side, Pristine Seafood, and retail private label brands; Sonexus Health (a pharmaceutical commercialization company; now Cardinal Health Specialty); Chronic Disease Fund (a leading nonprofit focused on removing barriers to treatment) and DiseaseTrak (a technology company specializing in patient lifecycle management).

Daniel Kinder

President & CEO

Daniel Kinder is the co-founder of IAP and is responsible for managing the company operations with the IAP management team. Daniel is the Founder & Executive Chairman of Double Kingdom Holdings, headquartered in London (UK), an investor and manager of agriculture & food production, processing and logistics assets across Sub Saharan Africa. Daniel was the Managing Director of Hanyang Group (Beijing, China) and the co-founder of the Family Heritage Centre at Tsinghua University (Beijing, China). He was the Co-Managing Partner of Park Avenue Equity Partners (New York). He began his career in Credit Suisse First Boston’s Financial Institutions M&A Group (New York). Daniel is a member of the Board of Directors of Prime Energy, a leading East African hydro-energy company. He received his B.A. Honours (Dean’s List) from The School of Politics & Economics at the University of Liverpool (UK). He is a Henry Crown Fellow of The Aspen Institute (USA).

Ambassador Fode Seck

Senior Advisor
Board of Directors

Ambassador Seck is a Member of Panel of Experts to the Office of the Chairman of the African Union.  He was the Ambassador Permanent Representative of Senegal to the United Nations in New York (USA) and Geneva (Switzerland).  He was the Ambassador of Senegal in Brazil and Saudi Arabia, the Chief Technical Advisor to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Senegal, Minister Secretary General of Government in Senegal and Ambassador Secretary General of Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Senegal.

Ambassador Seck holds Bachelor and Masters degrees in Arts and English from Cheikh Anta DIOP University in Dakar, Senegal and a Gabriel d’Arboussier from ENAM.

Richard Belcher

Director,
Farm Development & Operations

Richard is the Director of Farm Development & Operations for IAP.  He is the founder of SENSA Agri, an agriculture infrastructure, cattle breeding and premium meat production company.

Richard founded West Africa Farms (Senegal) in 2011, a subsidiary of The Shropshire Group (G’s) in the UK.  WAF operates a 700 hectares farm in northern Senegal, employing 1,200 local personnel, growing premium quality salad, vegetables and added value produce to major UK, European and North American retailers.  WAF exports 12-14 containers per week in European winter season, supplying 40% of the UK winter market in radishes and spring (salad) onions.  WAF was the inspiration behind PDIDAS, a World Bank funded PPP model to support local smallholder farmers.

Before establishing WAF in Senegal, Richard developed the international farming operations for G’s in the United Kingdom, Czech Republic, Hungary, Spain, South Africa and Morocco.  Richard was in the 1SAI Battalion in the South African Army. Richard comes from a family of six generations of farm owner-operators in South Africa.

Aly Ndiaye

Director,
Impact & Community Development

Aly is a Senegalese national.  He was formerly Director of Green Industries division, Agence Sénégalaise de la Reforestation et de Grande Muraille Verte, Ministry of the Environment, Senegal.  He was the mastermind behind the Tolou Keur community garden project, implemented across several hundred towns and villages in Brazil and West Africa.  He was the Technical Director of the Livelyhoods Project in Brazil (co-operation with Danone), which transitioned 250 smallholder farmers in the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to ecological agriculture.  He is the designer of the PAIS program (Production Agroécologie Intégrée et Soutenable) in partnership with SEBRAE, the Bank of Brazil and the Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture for the creation of over 10,000 smallholder farms in 26 Brazilian states. 

Aly graduated in Agronomy from the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ) in agroecology and organic agriculture.  He was a Research Fellow at the Brazilian Agricultural Research Company EMBRAPA in agrobiology.  He holds a Master’s degree in Organic Agriculture from the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro and Embrapa Agrobiologie in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  Aly has spoken at TED conferences globally on smallholder farming and community engagement through sustainable agriculture.

Mamadou Ndiaye

Chief Financial Officer

For 20 years Mamadou was the CFO, Internal Audit Control, Legal and Notarial and Social & Tax Director of companies owned by Compagnie Fruitiere Group, one of the largest fruit and vegetable companies globally, with over 2,000 employees in Senegal.  Mamadou’s responsibilities for Compagnie Fruitiere comprised subsidiaries Grands Domaines du Senegal (GDS) – Cherry tomato, sweet corn and banana production; Societe Financiere et Agricole (SOFIA) – Banana and pineapple trading from Senegal and Mauritania; EOLIS Senegal – Vessel ownership and transit management; Inter Afrique Participation – Agriculture investment management; and Grands Domaines de Mauritanie (GDM) – Production of okra, green beans and bananas in Mauritania.  Mamadou was a member of the technical commission in charge of reforming Senegal’s investment code until 2022 and President of the Senegal tax/customs union for VALLAGRI, a union of large-scale farm owners in Senegal, from its creation in 2016. 

Benoit Roche​

Director, Corporate Finance

Benoit Roche has been with Double Kingdom for the last 8 years as an Investment Manager, with primary responsibility for Double Kingdom’s investment and development projects pan Africa. Benoît worked in Paris for the Arts et Biens family office as a private equity analyst and at Crédit Agricole in corporate banking. Benoît holds a Masters degree in Corporate Finance from INSEEC Business School (Paris).

Adama Gaye

Director,
Environmental & Quality Management

Adama is an environmental and water safety expert focused on social management.  Over the last 30 years he held executive and management roles at OLAC (Office des Lacs et Cours D’Eau, Senegal) in water quality improvement for Lac de Guiers (PRASEG, Senegal), water security and sanitation (PISEA, Senegal), coastal protection (PPCS, Senegal), municipal development (ADM, Senegal) and restoration of the ecological and economic functions of Lac de Guiers (PREFELAG, Senegal).  Adama was a founder and executive member of the PDIDAS Management Committee.  All these initiatives were co-funded by IFC, Africa Development Bank, AFD (France), World Bank and the Dutch Corporation.

Adama is an expert in environmental and social impact studies and implementing their terms of reference, leading IAP’s EIS reporting and water safety management programs.  Adama has had multiple research studies published, has lectured at the University of Saint Louis, Senegal for decades, has 16 Diplomas and Specialization Certifications and holds a Bachelor and a Master’s degree in Physical Geography, Ecosystem and Environment from Gaston Berger University, Saint Louis, Senegal.

John Banigan​​

Director,
Business Development USA

Captain John Banigan U.S. Navy (retired), Director of Corporate Development, joins us from Afritex Ventures and Plus Veterans, a vertically integrated seafood provider and a supply chain consulting company, respectively. John is a co-founder of Facilitrace, leading strategy and development to drive innovation in the food retail industry. A 26-year combat Veteran, the Captain had the distinct privilege of commanding 2 capital warships – a Ticonderoga class Cruiser and an Arleigh Burke Destroyer – and directing the business line of our nation’s most advanced combat programs. He matured a White House concept into a premier, fully operational, forward deployed ballistic missile defense combat capability. John earned the prestigious Legion of Merit and Meritorious Service Medals.

Alberto Ojembarrena

Senior Advisor,
Agronomy & Commercial

Alberto has more than 30 years of experience agribusiness in the commercial, agronomy and general management at Pioneer Hi-Bred and Corteva Agriscience operating in Europe.  Alberto has been responsible during more than 20 years for the whole commercial operations in Spain and Portugal developing and fine-tunning a unique go-to market that positioned the sales of the company in a permanent level of almost 50% of market share in the segments where they participated.

Alberto was the President of the Breeders Group in the Spanish Seed Producers Association of Spain, APROSE, and was one of the founders of the Association of Spanish Vegetal Breeding Companies, ANOVE, being at the Board of Directors till 2022. He was member of the Group of Evaluation of New Varieties of Corn and Sorghum at the Ministry of Agriculture in Spain from 2001 till 2013. He was Vice-president of Spanish Foundation ANTAMA for Agriculture and Food Biotechnology Acceptance from 1999 till 2022. He was invited by the USDA as European representative at the conference on GMOs in Agriculture, in Sharm El-Sheikh (Egypt) in 2006, and he is Teacher at the Master of Vegetal Breeding at CIEHAM – ICARDA in Zaragoza (Spain).

Alberto holds a degree in Agricultural Engineering, and a big part of his career has been responsible of product positioning, being the link between Research and Commercial Departments, so he understands the value of scientific and data-based decisions. He loves statistics and pilot tests for sustainable process performance.

Tinus Bergh

Director,
Agronomy

Tinus is an agronomy specialist with 20 years of experience in soil chemistry and plant physiology.  He has a passion for building fertile soils for sustainable agriculture in southern Africa, focusing on soil analysis, crop planning, eco-friendly and organic fertiliser for enhanced product delivery.  He is the director of Seedfert Pty Ltd and Geckofert Pty Ltd, two companies that provide organic and inorganic fertilisers to farmers in the region.

Hamet Owens Ndiaye

Manager,
Logistics

Hamet is a Logistics Manager for IAP Senegal.  Hamet began his career as logistics coordinator at HTLC Network, a multinational logistic company based in Switzerland, for 6 years.  Hamet returned to Senegal and joined local logistics company OuiCarry, which provided global logistics services to international companies operating in West Africa, including MAERSK Shipping Lines and Schlumberger.  Hamet became CEO of OuiCarry, providing logistics services to IAP Senegal.

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