In anticipation of investment growth in 2013, Africa specialist investment firm Scipion Capital has made three new appointments in its London office. The firm has seen a “significant uptick,” it says, in interest in its commodities trade finance fund, which finances trade in soft and mineral commodities in Africa.

Georgina Fleming joins Scipion to oversee product management and development, a newly-created role focused on sourcing investment opportunities and developing investor relations.

Formerly a business development coordinator at New York law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, Fleming left that post in March last year to focus on ZOF Africa, an NGO that funds vocational training for orphans in Zimbabwe. She has also spent time working for a private equity firm in agribusinesses in the sub-Saharan region.

Scipion has also hired George Sanders and Ben Storrs as analysts.

Sanders previously worked at London Research International, a boutique Japanese energy, infrastructure and commodities research firm. As part of Scipion’s trading desk, he will focus on deal origination and commodity research. He will also be working to develop relationships with Asian investors.

Storrs focuses primarily on commodity and energy research, alongside Scipion’s pan-African portfolio of commodity trade finance transactions. He has worked as an economic researcher at London-based think-tank the Institute of Economic Affairs.

Scipion chief executive and founder Nicolas Clavel has over three decades of experience in trade finance. After beginning his career with Credit Suisse in Switzerland, he joined Citicorp Investment Bank in London covering EMEA structured trade finance in 1984. He left Citibank in 1992 as CEO of its West African head office in Dakar to start DOC Finance, a merchant bank based in Geneva focused on trade finance in Latin America and Africa.

He returned to Africa seven years later as CEO of Standard Bank’s Congo-Kinshasa subsidiary, before joining Standard Chartered Grindlays in Switzerland two years later. He then spent five years with Barclays Private Bank in Switzerland managing a portfolio of East African clients before setting up Scipion Capital.