Marie Lora-Mungai is a strategic advisor, investor and entrepreneur specialized in the African Creative Industries and Sports Business, with a 18-year experience spanning 27 countries on the continent.

 

Her advisory firm Restless Global provides solutions to international companies, institutions and investors seeking to expand to Africa, and has worked for clients such as Warner Bros., UNESCO, Twitter Films, TRACE, FilmOne Entertainment, Rainbow Sports Global, Olympia Le Tan, Galeries Lafayette, the governments of France and Nigeria, and development banks AFD, Proparco, AfDB and Afreximbank.

Over the past few years, Restless Global has built a rare expertise on the Financing of the African Creative Industries. The firm has built frameworks, strategies and tools to facilitate the investment of both public and private actors in the Creative sector and has advised its clients on how to adapt traditional and alternative financing models (incl. debt, private equity, venture capital, grants, microcredit, crowdfunding) to service different segments of the African Creative entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Marie is the publisher of the popular newsletter HUSTLE & FLOW in which she shares business insights on the African Creative and Sports space.

Prior to founding Restless Global, Marie's hands-on expertise as an entrepreneur touched various sectors of the African creative and tech industries. It is rooted in the concrete experimentation of many growth and revenue models across the continent. Marie previously founded talent agency Restless Talent Management; Buni.tv, a pioneer African VOD platform acquired by TRACE in 2016; and Buni Media, a Nairobi-based studio which employs 80 people and produces the highly successful political satire shows THE XYZ SHOW (Kenya) and OGAS AT THE TOP (Nigeria).

As a writer-producer and showrunner, Marie co-created and co-wrote several TV shows, including the Nigerian crime drama THE TRADE, currently set up at Sony Television.

During her first career as an award-winning television journalist, Marie worked across 3 continents for CNN, Reuters TV, AFP TV and the BBC.

Marie holds a Masters in Marketing and Communications from ESCP Business School (Paris) and a Masters in Political Science from Sciences Po (Paris). She was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum (2017), a Rising Talent by the Women’s Forum (2017), and a Choiseul Institute’s Young Leader (2015 & 2016). 

She currently resides in Lisbon, Portugal, where she founded the Lisboa Africa Investors Club, bringing together Lisbon-based investors with an interest in the continent.