Vuyelwa Mahanyele

Regional Director, GE Power

Vuyelwa joined GE in 2012 and has been a commercial leader for GE’s thermal power businesses working collaboratively with key energy stakeholders across SSA and MENAT regions. Vuyelwa’ s tenure at GE has been focused on providing relevant and innovative power generation solutions that meet the region’s energy transition and energy security needs.

Today Vuyelwa is the Regional Sales Director for GE’s Gas Power business across Southern and Eastern Africa leading the Gas Power portfolio, which ranges from 30MW aeroderivative turbines to >500MW heavy duty gas turbines. Within this role Vuyelwa leads a team that develops power projects across the subregion, working alongside governments, lenders (commercial & multi-lateral agencies) and private investors to advance projects through the critical technical and commercial milestones required to achieve financial close and ultimately commercial operation.

Prior to this role, Vuyelwa was the Business Development Director for GE’s Steam Power business across Southern Africa accountable for the commercial growth of the portfolio, which included heavy duty power generation technology for coal, nuclear, waste-to-energy and environmental control solutions. She led the end-to-end commercial process of key thermal power projects within the region with a combined estimated value of US$5B.

In a previous role, Vuyelwa led Marketing Development & Strategy for GE Power across Sub-Saharan Africa. In this function she developed and executed market entry and growth strategies for most of GE’s emerging countries in SSA. This involved understanding and aligning to energy policy, fuel dynamics and economic outlook, all with the aim of driving GE’s growth strategies within the respective countries.

In 2018, she joined GE South Africa’s Board of Directors and is a Director of the Londvolota Trust formed by GE, focused on building entrepreneurial capability and capacity within Black-owned industrial companies in South Africa.

Prior to joining GE, she held strategic commercial roles at Absa, Liberty Life, and Investment Solutions (now Alexander Forbes Multi Manager).
Vuyelwa holds an MBA qualification from Wits Business School in addition to a BCom Marketing Management and Honors Degree in Strategic Management both from the University of Johannesburg.