Cheick Sanankoua

Founder & Chairman at Omega Sports Holding

Speaker

With a B.S. in Industrial Engineering and Management from Northwestern University and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Harvard Business School, Mr. Sanankoua is the Co-Founder & Managing Partner of HC Capital Properties. Mr. Sanankoua is responsible for the company's investments and activities in Francophone West and Central Africa and has led transactions worth US$500 million since 2014.

Mr. Sanankoua is a global financial expert specialized in private equity, impact investing, development and asset management in the real assets space. Mr. Sanankoua has over 17 years of experience with international financial institutions such as Merrill Lynch Investment Bank (New York and London) where he worked on transactions exceeding US$30 billion and the London based private equity firm Helios Investment Partners, which manages approximately US$3 billion. Mr. Sanankoua is the initiator of major financial operations carried out on the African continent, including the first corporate green bond in Francophone West and Central Africa.

In addition to his role as Managing Partner at HC Capital Properties, Mr Sanankoua is the Founder & Chairman of Omega Sports Holding, a private investment firm focused on building impactful platforms in the sports industry and Vice-President of Omega Sports Holding’s portfolio company, Abidjan Basketball Club, the leading basketball platform in Cote d’Ivoire.

Mr Sanankoua also founded Omega Africa Ventures, a private investment holding company that focuses on venture capital in Africa, with investments in the fintech and energy efficiency space.

Mr. Sanankoua is a member of the investment committee of the Investisseurs & Partenaires, a $95M impact investment fund dedicated to small and medium-sized enterprises in Sub-Saharan Africa and the investment committee of Africaworks, a leading co-working firm. He is also the Non-Executive Chairman of Conergies-Group, a leader in Commercial and Industrial Refrigeration and Climate Engineering solutions for the large-scale distribution and agri-food industry in West Africa whose largest shareholder is the Energie de France group (EDF).

In accordance with its commitment to African development, Mr. Sanankoua serves as a non-Executive board member for a number of not-for-profit organizations including most notably the Bright Future for Africa Foundation of which he is also co-founder.