DHL Global Forwarding Names Sascha Geiken Chief Executive for Sub Saharan Africa

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Sascha Geiken, who has spent more than three decades in freight forwarding and most recently ran ocean freight for the Middle East and Africa, now leads DHL Global Forwarding across Sub Saharan Africa outside South Africa, a region where DHL Group committed more than €300 million of investment in 2025.

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Sascha Geiken has been appointed Chief Executive Officer of DHL Global Forwarding for Sub Saharan Africa, a remit that excludes South Africa. He succeeds Egidio Monteiro and reports to Tobias Maier, Chief Executive Officer of DHL Global Forwarding Middle East and Africa.

Geiken steps up from the role of Vice President Ocean Freight for the Middle East and Africa, where his responsibilities spanned global trade, ocean freight services, rates, capacity, trade lane development and sustainable transport. He entered the freight forwarding industry in 1995 and, before joining DHL Global Forwarding, spent years in senior leadership in the Middle East, serving as managing director across several of the region’s markets. His recent work has focused on how trade between Africa and Europe, Asia and the Middle East is being reshaped.

Maier pointed to that regional depth as the basis for the appointment, describing Sub Saharan Africa as an important growth market for the business but one where execution on the ground decides results. “Sascha knows our business and he knows this region,” Maier said in a statement.

Geiken framed his mandate in terms that will be familiar to any importer or exporter on the continent: volume alone does not solve the problem of moving goods across African markets. “Trade is growing, but our customers need more than capacity,” he said in a statement. “They need reliability across the entire supply chain, from the international leg through customs and inland transport to final delivery.”

The appointment follows DHL Group’s announcement in 2025 of an investment of more than €300 million in Sub Saharan Africa to expand infrastructure and services across DHL Express, DHL Global Forwarding and DHL Supply Chain. For African manufacturers and traders, and for Gulf investors backing trade corridors into the continent, the choice of a leader whose recent work centred on trade lanes linking Africa with the Middle East underlines the company’s stated focus on dependable performance across the full journey, from port to final destination.