Dennis Ngonela
Dennis Ngonela is the Chief Operating Officer of Ngaresero Soda Company (NSC), Tanzania’s first fully Tanzanian-owned soda-ash producer operating on the southern shore of Lake Natron. Joining as employee No. 1 in 2018, the Kenyan-born mineral-processing engineer built the business from a two-person exploration outfit into a headline industrial project that, in November 2024, secured a US $339 million equity-and-debt package led by Africa Finance Corporation and CRDB Bank. The 500 000-tonne-per-year plant—now under construction and slated for commissioning in early 2027—will more than double East Africa’s soda-ash output, supplying regional glass, detergent, and lithium-refining markets while creating 1,200 direct jobs.
Ngonela oversees engineering, supply-chain, and ESG functions, championing a closed-loop brine-management system and a 25-MW solar farm that is expected to offset 60 percent of the operation’s power needs. He has embedded community investment into NSC’s core policy, allocating two percent of annual revenues to healthcare, potable-water boreholes, and STEM scholarships for Maasai youth. In 2023 the company opened a 40-bed maternal clinic in Engare Sero village, cutting emergency transfer times to Arusha by half.
An alumnus of Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology and the Harvard Business School’s Africa Rising program, Ngonela mentors start-ups through Tanzania’s Mining Tech Hub and sits on the African Fine Chemicals Association’s board, advocating for local benefaction across the continent.