Sid Wahi

Sid Wahi is the Managing Director of CMA Investment Holdings and Vice Chairman of CNBC Africa. He is also the founder of Thynker, an Artificial Intelligence consultancy, and serves as Managing Director of Strategy and Special Projects at the Transnational Academic Group (TAG). He works across media, technology transformation, and enterprise AI, building and advising across the CMA portfolio, which includes CNBC Africa and Forbes Africa, as well as external clients. 

Sid joined the family business in 2010 to set up the Forbes franchise for Africa, leading the planning, launch, and licensing of both ForbesAfrica.com and CNBCAfrica.com. In 2017, he co-created Crypto Trader, Africa’s first television program dedicated to cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. In 2018, he led a business wide restructuring initiative that reduced operating costs at Africa Business News by 40% over three years. 

Through Thynker, Sid has spearheaded CNBC Africa’s end-to-end technology transformation, consolidating infrastructure onto AWS, deploying Bedrock-powered semantic search across an 18-year content archive, and replacing legacy SaaS tools with purpose-built internal systems, including video library management, event operations, lead management, and DevOps automation agents. This transformation has been recognized as an official AWS case study.

In his role as Managing Director – Strategy and Special Projects at the Transnational Academic Group (TAG), Sid contributes to the strategic direction of one of the region’s leading transnational education platforms. Founded to develop human capital across emerging markets in Africa and the Middle East, TAG owns and operates Curtin University Dubai and Lancaster University Ghana—both ranked among the world’s top one per cent of universities—as well as the ABN Training Institute in South Africa.

In 2025, Sid moderated the inaugural CNBC Africa AI Summit in 2025, leading conversations with senior figures across financial services and technology on the practical deployment of AI across African enterprises. He has spoken at numerous regional and international conferences on subjects ranging from changes in media consumption habits to doing business in Africa, including the African Media Leaders Forum, the Africa Business Conference at Lagos Business School, and the Africa Business Summit at London Business School. 

He serves on the boards of ABN Publishing, ABN Pictures, ABN Training Institute, ABN Nigeria, and ABN Kenya. He is a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO) and was named one of the Mail & Guardian‘s Top 200 Young South Africans in 2014. In March 2013, Sid was part of an expedition that successfully summited Mount Kilimanjaro. 

Sid completed his schooling at the Doon School in India and holds a Bachelor of Business Administration (Honors) in Finance from the Schulich School of Business, York University, Toronto, Canada. He has also completed the Board Leadership Program at Gordon Institute of Business Sciences (GIBS) Johannesburg and the Oxford Blockchain Strategy Program. 

Having more than 15 years of leadership within one of Africa’s foremost media groups, Sid writes and speaks extensively on Artificial Intelligence, future of media and its transformation, and doing business across the African continent.