Phatisa, a private equity fund manager, has appointed Robert Kruger as SEMS Manager, bringing along over a decade’s worth of ESG experience.

Kruger joins from Environmental Resource Management (ERM), where he was a senior consultant for numerous clients across various sectors, including manufacturing, chemical, infrastructure, food and beverage processing and micro-finance to mention a few.

His primary role and main responsibilities included ESG due diligence and risk assessment for mergers & acquisitions purposes, guided by the World Bank Group Environmental, Health and Safety Guidelines, Equator Principles and IFC Performance Standards.

Kruger has previously worked closely and actively with Phatisa on social and environmental due diligences such as FES (Malawi) and Top Crust Bakery (Nigeria), as well as on transactions that did not proceed to completion.

Prior to ERM, he also held a senior consultancy position in various top-end ESG-focused companies, including Environmental Business Strategies (EBS) where he managed larger-scale environmental and social impact assessment projects; all associated input studies and aspects.

He has significant experience in countries throughout Africa, including Burundi, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

His European in-country experience includes Hungary and the United Kingdom.

One of Kruger’s first roles will be to further build our in-house ESG capabilities; better service delivery to portfolio companies and investors alike.

Stuart Bradley, Senior Partner at Phatisa, said: “The Phatisa Partners are delighted that we were able to recruit from within our own exisiting business network somebody we feel knows our work ethic, our passion for development equity and is the best fit for the vacant position.”

“Robert commands solid ESG knowledge and expertise - we are eager to afford him the opportunity to improve Phatisa’s ESG strategy, implementation and reporting standards,” he said.