Founder & CEO, ATFA Egypt
With over two decades of experience across agriculture and banking, Nihal Abdelghaffar brings a unique combination of financial expertise and hands-on agricultural knowledge. Her 15-year tenure at HSBC saw her leading corporate client relationships and high-impact strategic initiatives, collaborating closely with C-suite executives across diverse industries.
Nihal’s foray into agriculture began with the successful turnaround of her family-owned farm—a pivotal experience that exposed her to the sector’s operational inefficiencies and structural challenges. This transformation ignited her mission: to modernize Egypt’s agribusiness landscape, with a strong emphasis on empowering women—especially in land ownership and leadership roles.
After transitioning from the corporate world, Nihal dove fully into agriculture.
She not only revived a struggling plantation but also identified systemic barriers in market access, post-harvest logistics, and value chain integration—particularly affecting small and medium-sized farms. In response, she founded ATFA Egypt, a company dedicated to marketing and exporting sustainable, premium-quality produce from independent growers. Through this platform, she helps local farmers scale their operations, embrace digitization, and access global markets.
Nihal is an active member of the Horticultural Export Improvement Association (HEIA) and the Date Palm Council. She has also consulted for Global Project Partners E.V. (Germany) on the “Smart Africa” initiative, contributing to the design of vocational training and smart agriculture programs across the continent.
A proud graduate of the American University in Cairo (BA & MBA), and an accredited director by Egypt’s Financial Regulatory Authority, Nihal is driving innovation in Egypt’s date palm sector—particularly in unlocking the potential of underutilized, non-organized varieties. Her broader vision includes digitizing farm operations, deploying ERP and smart agriculture technologies, and reshaping Egypt’s agricultural value chains to be more inclusive, efficient, and globally competitive.
