Manie Eagar – President & CEO
Manie Eagar is an experienced global investment and mergers and acquisitions advisor, and marketing and business development executive with over 30 years of driving new wealth creation, business growth and strategic innovation.
Manie was a co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer of Credits, an initiative of Pythia, a software company out of the Isle of Man that is developing a unique Crosschain infrastructure based cyrptocurrency that delivers frictionless and secure token based value exchange and recordal with a broad range of commercial and public sector applications.
Manie Eagar addressing a Canadian Senate Committee hearing on digital currencies regulation
Manie was also the Co-founder and Chairman of the Digital Finance Institute advancing digital finance innovation, transparency and inclusion. The DFI’s aim is to enable digital finance and cryptocurrency integration with the financial and retail ecosystems. Manie has a sound understanding of the emerging markets and the needs of the financially underserved and under-banked. He is a director of ConnectAfrica, a Rockefeller Foundation and World Bank collaboration.
He provided thought leadership to the THNK School of Creative Leadership’s Executive Program on “The Future of Capitalism” in Vancouver, British Columbia in 2015 to explore how digital currencies like bitcoin, can increase access to low-carbon housing.
His experience grew out of long-term engagements at Barclays Africa (ABSA), Vodafone (m-Pesa and virtual call centre hosting projects) and the J&J Investment Management Group (caretaking strategic partnerships Tata, Macquarie Bank, Old Mutual, and Dimension Data/NTT Nippon). He led the pioneering research and prototyping of Africa’s first multi-purposed smartcard payment platform OneCard Systems.
Facilitating a session at the THNK workshops on alternative currencies applications with the City of Vancouver
He was a director at ICOZA/Internet Solutions, Africa’s largest ISP owned by Dimension Data / NTT Nippon, the world’s largest ICT company, where he was also responsible for the marketing and strategy for their Cisco-based ecommerce platform rollout.
Over the past two years he represented the UUX/TotalMovie mobile and online app based content viewing initiative of Grupo Salinas Telecommunications and Media in Africa and Asia.
Manie was the chief strategist for the South African government’s $40 Billion Development Bank of South Africa Infrastructure Centre of Excellence for Infrastructure Development Plan initiated in 2012 supported by the World Bank and the IMF. He is an expert in global infrastructure and telecommunications development for emerging markets.
Ms Hillary Clinton opening an OLSET class in Soweto, South Africa
The past two years he has focused on deal shaping and making in the new world of digital value finance, mobile media delivery platforms and digital finance 2.0, inspired by the latest cryptocurrency protocols. He has supported a number of startups, growth acceleration, mergers and acquisitions, VC tie-ups and alignments with regulatory compliance. He developed the openaxyz collaboration software that was deployed at leading financial institutions such as Barclays Africa and was nominated for the RIC Innovation Idol in Ontario in 2012.
He is a global investment, mergers and acquisitions executive with over 30 years of driving new wealth creation, business growth and strategic innovation. He brings international experience and deep skills in the startup, investment management and venture capital space. He has been involved in multiple successful start-ups, government policy developments and national educational initiatives in South Africa.
Manie is an expert in educational policy and charitable developments, particularly in emerging and new areas. He was the founder and CEO of the Open Learning Systems Education Trust in South Africa. OLSET was a national strategy that delivered math, science and technology courses to students in South Africa that was sponsored by USAID, CIDA and Kagiso Trust. In 1996, Former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, inaugurated the OLSET project and assisted with teaching a class to students in Soweto, South Africa.
Manie is a Director of the Bitcoin Alliance of Canada and a member of the Bitcoin Foundation.