Austin Onele is a transaction advisory professional who specialises in originating, structuring, and facilitating investment transactions across Nigeria and West Africa’s infrastructure, energy, and agriculture sectors.
At Onyx, he leads investment origination and deal facilitation, working across energy transition, infrastructure concessions, agriculture value chains, and private credit to connect bankable projects with development capital and institutional investors.
Over the course of his career, he has originated, structured, and advised on transactions exceeding $100 million in cumulative project value — including a $85 million capital raise for the Onitsha River Port Concession, the origination of a 20,000MT sovereign grain storage transaction between the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority and an agricultural consortium, and financial advisory support for Nigeria’s Gas Flare Commercialisation Program under USAID Power Africa, which attracted over 100 investors, developers, and technology providers.
He began his career in oil and gas at TotalEnergies, where he worked on gas pricing strategy and contributed to the delivery of the Egina FPSO — one of Nigeria’s flagship deepwater projects. That foundation has shaped his approach to project finance across sectors, including CNG/LNG infrastructure, utility-scale solar, mini-grids, agricultural logistics, and real estate development.
He maintains active institutional relationships across the IsDB Group (ICD, ITFC, ICIEC), the World Bank, AfDB, JICA, UNDP, REA, NIRSAL, NIPC, NSIA, and the Bank of Industry, and has supported mandates in Nigeria, Ghana, and Liberia.
His technical foundation in financial modelling and project finance enables him to assess investment readiness, structure transactions, and engage credibly with both project sponsors and capital providers across development finance and private markets.
Austin holds the Financial Modelling & Valuation Analyst (FMVA®) and Advanced Financial Modelling (AFM) designations from the Corporate Finance Institute, and has completed executive education programmes at Harvard Business School Online and Bocconi University.