AI investor · Fund builder · Merchant banker · Washington, DC
Investor, fund builder and merchant banker across AI, frontier technology, infrastructure and financial services.
Founder of Sterling Merchant Finance in 1989. Three decades structuring emerging-market transactions, while investing globally in what comes next.
Guided by a practical One Africa vision: connected markets, capital and institutions, so African companies can compete at scale.
One question across all three: can the opportunity be financed, governed and scaled?
AI and frontier technology, angel through Series B, across the US, Europe, India and Africa.
The portfolio includes early investment exposure to companies that have since become leaders in artificial intelligence, alongside emerging businesses with credible paths toward category leadership and unicorn scale.
Beyond technology, Roger invests in and evaluates select opportunities across financial services, healthcare, sustainable agriculture, consumer markets, infrastructure, and real assets.
AfrAIxport Fund: a venture platform for African AI companies built to scale across borders.
The fund is grounded in a simple thesis: Africa’s AI challenge is no longer awareness. It is investability. The opportunity is to connect capable founders with appropriate capital, institutional support, larger markets, and pathways to global competitiveness.
Through Sterling Merchant Finance: capital raising, project finance, PPPs, M&A and restructuring.
His work spans governments, development institutions, corporations, investors, and sponsors, principally across Africa and other emerging markets. Where conviction and interests align, Sterling may also invest alongside its partners.
Africa’s largest opportunities — trade, AI, infrastructure, energy, capital — cannot reach full potential inside fragmented national markets.
Fragmented markets produce
Connected markets create
Countries keep their identities and build shared capabilities where scale matters. Collective strength, translated into measurable economic advantage.
Africa’s next global export won’t be minerals. It will be AI.
Africa’s AI challenge is no longer awareness. It is investability.
On AI, capital formation, trade and institutions — and how Africa moves from strategy to investable companies.
AI investability, fund building, capital formation, trade and Africa’s competitiveness — with governments, investors, founders and institutions.
More than three decades structuring finance in markets where risk is hard to price and execution is never assumed.
Telecoms, aviation, power, transport, mining, water, agriculture, healthcare, finance and technology.
A transaction, an investment, a mandate — or a relationship worth building.