Sephela Makete Thema is a mining engineer and sustainability executive with 15 years of experience and is employed as General Manager for Tailings and Remining at Fraser Alexander’s South African and Namibian operations. He also serves as an Executive Director and Chairperson of the Board of Directors for one of Fraser Alexander Joint Venture subsidiary companies with a mining host community in South Africa. Fraser Alexander is a market leader and the largest outsourced tailings management service provider in the world. Makete has previously worked for various blue-chip companies in the mining industry.
Makete holds a Bachelor’s (BSc) and a Master’s (MSc) degree in Engineering, both from the University of the Witwatersrand. He also holds an Oxford Executive Leadership Program (OELP) from the University of Oxford, and a Postgraduate Diploma in Business Administration (PDBA) from the University of Pretoria. He serves as a committee member of the Southern Africa Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (SAIMM)’s Young Professionals Council which advocates for the interests of young professionals across the SADC region. Makete was recognized as one of the top 30 future leaders in African mining, the most outstanding future leader, and is an alumnus of the United Nations’s young innovators program.