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Lisa Toni Burke

Africa Inside Global Finance from Luxembourg

  • Writer: Lisa Burke
    Lisa Burke
  • Jul 22
  • 3 min read

Updated: Jul 24


Four African diaspora minds explain why the future of Africa-Europe capital is ownership, not aid, and why the people structuring it are already in the room.


Meet the guests:

  • Burrel Ngatcha, Founder and President, African Luxembourg Community, from Cameroon

  • Sonia Brahmi, CEO, Kairō (tax advisory, Luxembourg and Malta), Algerian heritage raised in France.

  • Dr. Leila Kamara, CEO, Kamara Advisory, architect of NZiFund, from Mauritania.

  • Cheikh Ndiaye, Counsel, Elvinger Hoss Prussen, raised in Senegal.


Five things from this episode:

  • Africa's diaspora is not sitting outside global finance. It's already inside the machinery, structuring the funds and running the compliance.

  • Ten of the twenty fastest growing economies in the world are African, and most investors have no idea.

  • Stablecoins could do more for African trade than a hundred banking reforms, no ink signatures required.

  • Sustainable investing shouldn't mean dumping the biggest polluters. It should mean funding their transition.

  • A 29 year old built a 1,400 person professional network from a single LinkedIn post. No excuses left.


Powerful Financial & Legal Plumbing

Cheikh Ndiaye, a fund lawyer at Elvinger Hoss Prussen, describes his high powered legal career in one word: plumbing. He designs the pipes that let money move safely across borders. It sounds humble. It is anything but.

"We're not standing outside of global finance. We are in the machinery, right here."

Africa is huge: One continent, 54 countries, zero patience for stereotypes

Burrel Ngatcha arrived in Luxembourg in 2023 and couldn't find anyone who shared his history. So in May 2025 he started a LinkedIn group. It's now over 1,400 professionals strong, and he built it before he turned 30.

"Africa has 54 countries, from the north to the south, the east to the west. It made sense for me to create something for the whole continent, not only for Cameroon."

And the network isn't a members only club for African passport holders. Everyone's invited, as long as they show up curious.

"It's not about being African who matters the most. It's about being conscious and curious about the dynamics that happen in Africa."

Huge investment opportunity

Ndiaye pointed out that ten of the twenty fastest growing economies on earth are in Africa, Niger among them, clocking around 11 percent annual growth. Most investors hear "Niger" and think risk, not returns.

"If you have boots on the ground, if you know the country, there are a lot of opportunities. There are a lot of success stories, but you don't know them."

Treating an entire continent as one undifferentiated risk category is lazy, and expensive.


Forget remittances, think and act with leverage

The most quotable moment of the whole episode came when Ndiaye dismantled the idea that diaspora money is just about sending cash home.

"The lever is turning that proximity into vehicles, people who can make an African asset legible to European capital and root it back as ownership, not aid."

The real strength are the people who understand both Luxembourg's regulatory rulebook and the reality on the ground back home. That double fluency is the diaspora's advantage.


Crypto - a hero of this story

Sonia Brahmi made the case that blockchain isn't the wild west headline it gets painted as. It's plumbing too, where stablecoins cut through expensive, slow banking systems and let neighbouring African countries actually trade with each other.

"We don't need ink signatures, because everything is documented."

Her argument is simple: transparency beats bureaucracy, and the technology to prove it already exists.


Sustainability with a spine

Dr. Leila Kamara spent three years researching whether sustainable investing actually improves financial performance. Her answer led her to found Kamara Advisory and design NZiFund, a fund built to finance the transition of the very companies that pollute the most, rather than simply excluding them.

"We really need to support them in their transition, rather than divesting from them when we are practising sustainable investment."

It's a sharper, more useful definition of sustainable finance than most of what gets marketed under that name.


The big picture

Four countries, one table, one unmistakable message. Identity is something you choose to carry, Africa is not one story but 54, and the diaspora sitting in Luxembourg's finance seats isn't waiting for a seat at anyone's table. They already have one.


Guests and links

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