Charles Field-Marsham

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Charles Field-Marsham (born in Toronto in 1968) is a Canadian entrepreneur whose business and charitable interests are concentrated in East Africa. Mr. Field-Marsham’s businesses range from companies dealing in the sales and service of heavy construction and mining equipment throughout East Africa, to a mining operation in western Kenya, and a Nairobi-based financial services firm.

Field-Marsham is owner and director of:

  • Panafrican Trucks & Equipment, adistributor for Komatsu construction equipment in East Africa;
  • Panafrican Mining Services a provider of technical services to Komatsu and Cummins equipment at mining sites in Tanzania;
  • Kenya Fluorspar Company, a fluorspar mine in Kerio Valley, Western Kenya and
  • Kestrel Capital, a Nairobi-based stockbroker and investment bank.
  • and a shareholder in Mobitelea Ventures Limited

Field-Marsham earned a, with distinction, in economics and political science from McGill University in Montrealin 1990.

From 1991 to 1993 he worked as a financial analyst in New York for the investment banking firm Credit Suisse First Boston.

In 1993, Field-Marsham moved to Kenya and during 1993 and 1994, Mr. Field-Marsham did consulting work and analyzed numerous investment opportunities. In 1995, he founded Kestrel Capital and obtained a stock brokerage license on the Nairobi Stock Exchange. The company is now both a brokerage and a licensed investment bank catering to Kenyan and international institutional investors and providing corporate finance and M&A services to Kenyan companies.

In 1996, as the Kenya government was privatizing some of its money-losing state-owned enterprises, Mr. Field-Marsham acquired Kenya Fluorspar. The company has since turned around and now produces 100,000 tons of fluorspar(calcium fluoride) per year and employs 400 people, for whom the company provides housing, health care and children’s schooling.

In 1997, Field-Marsham founded Panafrican Trucks & Equipment and acquired the distributorship for Komatsu Limited construction equipment in Kenya when the previous distributor became insolvent. Panafrican subsequently secured distribution rights in Tanzaniaand Uganda and now operates in seven locations in East Africa, serving such customers as Barrick Gold and AngloGold and employing over 250 people. Over the past decade, the company’s revenues have grown more than 20-fold.

In addition to the enterprises he owns and directs, Mr. Field-Marsham is also a non-executive director of Kenya Oil Company Ltd, an oil marketing company listed on the Nairobi Stock Exchange. The company operates more than 400 gas stations in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Zambia and Ethiopia.

Mr. Field-Marsham’s charitable work began in 1999 when through Kenya Fluorspar, he donated a school wing to a remote school in Muscut in the Rift Valley,Throughout the time he lived in Kenya, Field-Marsham witnessed the great works of Amref, the leading health development organization in Africa. Upon his return to Canada Field-Marsham offered to help Amref in Canada and in 2006 he joined the Board of Directors.

In 2004, Mr. Field-Marsham learned of a fledgling effort to help a few exceptionally bright students from rural Kenya secure scholarships to top American universities. He offered financial support, and since then the program, KENSAP - the Kenya Scholar-Athlete Project, has placed a dozen students a year at such institutions as Harvard, Yale, Princeton and MIT, all with full scholarships.