Agatha Nderitu is the founder and Managing Director of ATEAS. She has over 20 years of experience supporting businesses, trade associations, EAC policy makers, regional economic communities and development partners in our three service areas. She is an accomplished expert in private sector development; regional integration; trade in services; regulatory reform; project, programme and institutional planning; monitoring and evaluation and BMO capacity building.
As a Trade Officer with the UK Trade and Investment (UKTI – UK government’s trade and investment promotion body, now DTI), Agatha gained practical experience supporting international firms to expand into and invest in overseas markets. Under this role, she supported over 150 companies to export to Kenya and over 20 to invest in the country. In addition, Agatha is a certified export coach and trainer of trainers under the Netherlands CBI-Kenya/Uganda/Tanzania TPOs project. Under this programme, Agatha supported Kenyan exporters to enter new markets in Netherlands, as well as reviewed and adapted training modules used in training SME exporters at the Export Promotion Centre.
Over the last 11 years, Agatha has been working across the EAC region, working directly with the key private sector players in the EAC Region, the EAC Secretariat, the EAC policy makers drawn from all the 6 EAC Partner States and also sectors and MDAs; and development partners. As the Executive Director of the East African Business Council, Agatha represented the business community to EAC policy makers on various issues, including but not limited to trade facilitation, standards harmonization, elimination of NTBs, harmonization of domestic taxes, trade in services, labour movement and other factors that affect their ability to invest and / or trade across the region. As part of this role, Agatha engaged directly with all key businesses in the EAC, as well as key policy makers. She also gained practical experience working with BMOs.
Agatha has worked with several development partners, including DANIDA (as the Regional Integration Advisor under the REISP project); the World Bank Group (as a core member of the EAC Scorecard on implementation of the EAC Common Market) and with ITC, on the area of services, to mention a few. Agatha has also undertaken various assignments related to trade in services, monitoring and evaluation, organizational assessment, regulatory reform in services and labour mobility among others.