Dr. Sand is a Managing Partner at Criterion Africa Partners, where he plays a leading role in the firm's investment strategy and activities. With a distinguished career span of over 40 years, Dr. Sand brings extensive expertise in international finance and investments, encompassing venture capital, investment banking, commercial banking, and multilateral development financing.
Prior to his current role, Dr. Sand held significant leadership positions, including at the International Finance Corporation (IFC) from 1989 to 2008. Notably, he established and led the IFC's Forest Products Sector Group from 2002, overseeing a substantial portfolio of investments that catalyzed significant capital for new industry projects. His earlier career includes various roles in investment and commercial banking in Norway.
Dr. Sand holds a Ph.D. in International Business from UCLA, a Master of Business Administration from the University of California-Berkeley, Norwegian Law School (section 1 of 3) from the University of Oslo, Norway, and a Bachelor of Science from the University of Lund, Sweden.
Mr. Carrihill is responsible for sourcing, structuring, and monitoring investment opportunities. Prior to forming Criterion Africa Partners, Mr. Carrihill was with GEF where he led GEF’s forestry investments in Africa. He has completed investments in timber plantation and timber processing companies in South Africa, Swaziland, Mozambique, and Tanzania. He has over 20 years of experience in forestry-related companies and transactions in Africa.
Mr. Carrihill worked for 13 years in the African forestry and timber processing industry with Mondi, a subsidiary of Anglo American plc, a FTSE 100 natural resources company. During this time he held numerous positions in South Africa in forestry and corporate finance roles. In 2001, he moved to Europe to assist in the expansion of Mondi’s corrugated paper and packaging business. Mr. Carrihill also served as the CFO of Mondi Packaging Europe, a business with a turnover of EUR 850 million operating across 10 European countries.
A South African national, Mr. Carrihill holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Natal (Pietermaritzburg) and is Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, South Africa.
Ms. Kapp is responsible for sourcing, structuring, and monitoring investment opportunities. Prior to Criterion Africa Partners, Ms. Kapp was with GEF where she worked on forestry investments in Africa. She has six years of experience investing in forestry assets in Africa.
Ms. Kapp was a Vice President in Merrill Lynch’s internal strategic acquisition and integration team in New York and Hong Kong, where she evaluated potential acquisitions in the financial services industry and managed the integration efforts into the overall firm. She also spent 15 months in Angola working for an enterprise development NGO where she created an access to finance program directed towards helping small and medium enterprises better understand the credit process and interface with local banks.
Ms. Kapp holds a Master of Business Administration from Thunderbird School of Global Management and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Mr. Kapp is an Operating Partner and is responsible for biomass energy and industrial downstream investment opportunities. Prior to forming Criterion Africa Partners, Mr. Kapp was with GEF where he also worked on forestry investments in Africa. He has worked with the CAP team in various capacities since 2001 and he possesses strong technical and business expertise in of forestry, wood processing, and biomass energy. Mr. Kapp has over 20 years of experience in the global forestry sector and significant expertise at the interface of the traditional forestry sector and biomass energy.
Mr. Kapp has served as a senior executive for Global Forest Products in South Africa, where he contributed to the building of the company. After leaving Global Forest Products, Mr. Kapp was a Senior Consultant with Pöyry Management Consulting in Australia. He has also worked with clients globally as an independent forest industry specialist.
Mr. Kapp, a South African national, holds a Master of Science in Wood Science from the University of Stellenbosch and a Master of Business Administration in Financial Management from the University of Pretoria.
Ms. Napier is responsible for sourcing and analyzing investment opportunities. Prior to Criterion Africa Partners, Ms. Napier was with Broadreach Capital where she worked on transactions in the renewable energy and energy efficiency sectors.
A South African national, Ms. Napier holds a Master of Commerce with a focus on Development Finance, a Honours Bachelor of Commerce with a focus on financial analysis and portfolio management both from the University of Cape Town, as well as a Bachelor of Commerce with a focus on investments from the University of Stellenbosch. Ms. Napier is also CFA Charter holder.
Ms. Leigh is responsible for overseeing the firm’s operations and administrative matters. Prior to joining Criterion Africa Partners, Ms. Leigh served in a similar role with a South African investment firm and prior to that served as the Financial Director for a South African asset consultant. She has 20 years of experience in finance and investments including compliance, risk management, accounting and corporate secretarial functions.
Ms. Leigh trained at Ernst and Young in the UK, before joining Chevron Africa's internal audit department, responsible for its African operations. Ms. Leigh holds a law degree from Cambridge University, UK; a Chartered Accountant through ICEAW; a C(Prac) and C(Prof) through the Compliance Institute of SA (CISA).
Ms. Leigh’s professional memberships include the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales, South African Institute of Chartered Accountants, Compliance Institute of SA, Institute of Risk Managers South Africa, Institute of Directors.
Mr. Hathorn has extensive experience in the international wood pulp and paper industry, having served as the CEO of Mondi Group for 17 years before retiring in May 2017. Mondi has approximately 25,000 employees and is a FTSE 100 company which is listed on the Johannesburg and London Stock Exchanges with a market cap of £7 billion.
Mr. Hathorn’s management career began with Anglo American in 1989 and he transitioned to Mondi, which was then an Anglo subsidiary in 1991. He served as the general manager for Mondi Europe until he became CEO of Mondi in 2000. He was instrumental in Mondi’s international expansion and led the group through a demerger from Anglo American plc in 2007.
Until 2007 Mr. Hathorn was a member of the Anglo American plc Executive Committee from 2003 and was an Executive director of Anglo American plc from 2005, serving on the boards of a number of Anglo group companies, including De Beers, Anglo Platinum and Anglo Coal.
Mr. Hathorn was recently appointed Non-Executive Director and Chairman of the Audit and Risk Committee of Maitland International Holdings plc. He is also Chairman of Kore Potash Limited, an ASX listed company developing a potash mining operation in the Republic of Congo.
A South African national, Mr. Hathorn holds a Bachelor in Commerce from the University of Natal (Pietermaritzburg), is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountant, South Africa, and is a Chartered Financial Analyst.
Ms. Kirkman is the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Officer for Criterion Africa Partners, a role she has held since 2010. She oversees environmental and social standards across the firm's African forestry portfolio, leads FSC certification and IFC Performance Standards work at portfolio companies, and has managed ESG due diligence reviews in South Africa, Eswatini, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, Ghana and Gabon. She brings more than 29 years of forestry management experience spanning plantation and indigenous forests, sawmills and processing operations.
Alongside her work with Criterion, Ms. Kirkman has run an independent environmental consultancy since 2002, managing the environmental programmes for a number of South African forestry companies. She mentored the first FSC certification of an indigenous forest in South Africa and has advised the European Forest Institute, the Gatsby Foundation and South Africa's Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. Earlier, she was Environmental Manager for the Cape region at the South African Forestry Company (SAFCOL), where she oversaw 17 plantations covering some 140,000 hectares, introduced an ISO 14001 environmental management system and obtained FSC certification for the region.
Ms. Kirkman has chaired the SGS Business Assurance – BA Nature FSC PEFC Certification Impartiality Advisory Board since 2013, represented the economic chamber on South Africa's FSC Standards Development Committee from 2014 to 2020, and served on FSC working groups on the Conversion Remedy and the Policy for Association. She holds a BSc in Botany and Zoology and a BSc Honours and Masters in Zoology from the University of Port Elizabeth (now Nelson Mandela University)
Ms. Ndebele is a financial services executive with more than 25 years of experience spanning investment banking, debt and equity capital markets, consumer finance and asset management across emerging markets.
Until March 2026 she served as Africa CE at Bayport Management Limited, where she held operational and managerial responsibility for six markets — Botswana, Ghana, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. In that role she set regional strategy, raised capital from private credit funds, DFIs, commercial banks and bond investors, and embedded Bayport's group-wide ESG strategy, including its annual impact reporting. She joined Bayport in 2019 as Managing Executive, Global Capital Markets, with responsibility for equity capital markets, debt capital markets and investor relations.
Her earlier career includes Managing Director and Head of the Financial Institutions Group at ABSA Group; Managing Director and Head of Research for Africa at Renaissance Capital; Senior Investment Officer at Africap Microfinance Investment Company; founding partner of Cape Town-based asset manager Afena Capital; portfolio manager for African portfolios at Investec Asset Management (now Ninety One); and Vice President in Asset Management at Goldman Sachs in London.
Ms. Ndebele has served on the boards of numerous African companies. A Rhodes Scholar, she holds an MBA with distinction and an MSc in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford, and a BA in Economics, magna cum laude, from Harvard University. She is a CFA charterholder.
Ms. Ncube sources, structures and executes transactions across Criterion Africa Partners’ portfolios, taking investments from origination through due diligence and negotiation to exit, and manages investor relations for the firm. She brings 15 years of forestry sector experience and has evaluated more than $1 billion in transactions, sourced through proprietary deals, managed auctions and public tenders, and spanning leveraged buyouts, mergers, acquisitions and exits.
Earlier, Ms. Ncube worked with the Clinton Foundation, where she advised the CEO and CFO of a $350 million South African healthcare parastatal on cost structure, capital investment and long-term strategy. She also helped governments across Southern, West and Central Africa build HIV laboratory systems, with a focus on early infant diagnosis. She began her career in economic consulting at CRA International in Boston, before moving to equity research at Sanford C. Bernstein in New York City, where she covered large-cap banks and consumer finance.
Ms. Ncube holds an MBA in Finance from the Wharton School, a Master’s in Public Policy from Harvard Kennedy School, and a BA with Honors in Economics from Harvard University.
TEAM
The Criterion Africa Partners investment team has worked together since 2010 and brings a breadth and depth of experience in evaluating, acquiring and improving the management of timber assets. The team is skilled in all aspects of forestry investment and management. Best in class ESG practices and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) principles are core components of the investment strategy.