AFSANE JETHA

ALTA SEMPER

Afsane has 24 years of experience in investing, advising and creating value for companies across developed and emerging markets. Driven by her passion for making a positive impact and her belief in the catalytic power private capital can have across emerging markets, Afsane founded Alta Semper. Alta Semper, which is today one of the world’s leading impact investing firms, was founded alongside alongside Richard Parsons (former CEO of Time Warner and Chairman Emeritus of the Rockefeller Foundation) and members of the Esteé Lauder family in 2015. Alta Semper’s mission is to “Democratize access to generational health and well being across African growth markets.” Since inception, Afsane has led the firm's overall vision and strategy including the firm’s sourcing and execution of its current portfolio or market leading businesses in Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria and Kenya. Alta Semper has positively impacted the lives of millions of patients and consumers on the African continent across more than 20 countries as well as posted top-decile financial returns for the African continent. Alta Semper’s investor base today includes various family offices, including the Lauder / Parsons families, and various best-in-class global financial institutions including, but not limited to, the IFC (the investment arm of the World Bank), various government development banks and several leading European financial institutions. Alta Semper and its investee companies have received numerous industry recognitions such as Deal of the Year and Social Impact Deal of the Year on numerous occasions by Private Equity Africa (PEA) and was nominated by Private Equity International as Frontier Market’s Firm of the Year in 2023.

During her time as CEO of Alta Semper, Afsane has been responsible for Alta Semper becoming one of the key members of Investors for Health (I4H) alongside the IFC and BII, the UK government’s development bank. Afsane also serves on the Advisory Board of Ethical Principles in Health Care (EPiHC), whose mission is to foster the building of transparent, resilient healthcare systems through a set of shared principles that promote ethical decision making and behaviour.

Before co-founding Alta Semper, Afsane invested over US$2bn in healthcare, consumer and agribusiness across Ethiopia, Ghana, Uganda, and Cote D’Ivoire, as well as across US and European developed markets in the healthcare, consumer, and real estate sectors, which has included serving on the boards of some of Europe’s larger healthcare groups.

Earlier in her career Afsane build a strong track record and held various roles at firms such as Permira, Wasserstein, and Merrill Lynch and the WHO. At the WHO, Afsane was part of a small team that helped create the WHO’s first STOP TB initiative which included the WHO’s first global TB drug facility, a project which was eventually funded by the Gates Foundation.

Afsane holds a BSc from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and MBA from Harvard Business School. As part of the East African diaspora and a fourth generation Tanzanian, Afsane maintains very strong ties to the East African region. Afsane is a dual Canadian / British national. She is based in London and is married with two daughters.