ABOUT AF1
Africa First (AF1) is a premier risk assessment, advisory, and consultancy firm dedicated to delivering high-quality, integrity-driven solutions across Africa. In an era where multinational consultancies face reputational and ethical challenges, AF1 stands out by prioritizing the standing and safety of our clients, offering no-nonsense, reliable services grounded in decades of experience.
Our team brings together expertise from high-level strategic advisory roles, including critical support to African Union leadership, international organizations like UN agencies, and private sector stakeholders. Our philosophy goes beyond insider knowledge, combining first-hand experience, extensive networks, and open-source data to deliver verifiable, solid, and in-depth analysis.
Anchored in an internationally extensive and locally multi-layered network, AF1 provides detailed micro- and macro-level decision-support insights into Africa’s political, business, and diplomatic dynamics. Our approach distils patterns and trends from contemporary events, grounded in a deep historical and local perspective, ensuring our clients receive unparalleled strategic guidance.
JENS PEDERSEN, director
Jens Pedersen, founding director of Africa First Advisory, a bespoke political and strategy advisory company, based in Johannesburg, South Africa and Nairobi, Kenya.
Through Africa First Advisory, Jens provide both private sector, governments and institutional clients in market entry and access, risk analysis, and strategy advisory services.
A significant part of this work focuses on the medical sector in supporting established manufacturers, developers, and the government in the post-pandemic policy space about pandemic prevention, preparedness and response. Within this area, Jens equally works with governments, to develop their medical manufacturing strategies and capabilities.
This, based on more than a decade and a half with Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), a major international medical aid organisation, and more recently, Jens has supported the policy work of African CDC and other institutions, to policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent issues such as processes in relation to manufacturing and demand of African medical tools.
Based on his background and experience as both a practitioner and as an analyst that allows Jens to speak with authority on the issues of politics, health and development.