KENYA: SAFARICOM PAVES THE WAY FOR ITS NEW CEO

Peter Ndegwa, Safaricom's new boss, may be celebrating with a bottle of Senator, the affordable beer he introduced to the Kenyan market.

Kenya’s leading telco, Safaricom, announced Peter Ndegwa as its new CEO a day after a customer-focused rebrand.
Safaricom announced Ndegwa’s appointment on 24 October. The managing director of Diageo Continental Europe, he will take over in April 2020 as Safaricom’s third chief executive, following the late Bob Collymore, who served from 2010 to July 2019.

The announcement marks the end of a two-year search for a new chief executive. At the heart of the succession debate within the Safaricom board was the issue of nationality, as Safaricom’s two CEOs since inception have been foreigners who eventually took up Kenyan citizenship.

Running Kenya’s most profitable company will be a new challenge for Ndegwa, a Kenyan citizen who has spent the past 15 years in the alcoholic beverages industry.

• He joined Diageo group subsidiary East African Breweries in 2004 after an 11-year career in accounting firm PwC and has been managing director of Diageo Continental Europe since July 2018. He previously served as CEO for Guinness Nigeria and Guinness Ghana.
• Perhaps to show Ndegwa’s suitability and understanding of the local market, Safaricom chairman Nicholas Nganga pointed out in a profile sent to newsrooms that the Kenyan “is credited with the development of an affordable-beer strategy for EABL resulting in the production of new brands such as Senator beer. Senator beer became one of the most successful innovations by Diageo that has been featured in the Harvard Business Review.”

In February, then Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore told The Africa Report that his successor should be “someone who understands the financial sector a lot more, if we are to occupy the fintech space, and someone who is not going to be scared of going into other markets”.

Continue Reading >>>