Michael Joseph has taken over as Safaricom Chairman, following the retirement of Nicholas Ng’ang’a, effective 1st August 2020.
Mr. Nicholas Nganga has been the chairman of the board since 2007, having joined the Board in May 2004 and was elected Chairman in January 2007. He has steered the company through various milestones over the 13 years he was at the helm.
A statement from the telco affirmed that Mr. Nganga took up the leadership reins at a time when the government was starting the process of offering 25 percent of its shares to the public through the Nairobi Securities Exchange in 2008. He has managed to grow shareholder value by 607 percent since listing. Safaricom market capitalization at sh1.075 trillion is worth half of all the listed firms on the NSE.
Customer Growth
At the time of his appointment as Chairman, Safaricom had slightly over 6 million customers, 1,000 employees and only eight Safaricom shops across the country. Mr. Nganga retires from the telco that now serves over 35.6 million customers, across 50 shops and hundreds of service desks across the country, with a staff force of over 6,500 employees.
At the time of his appointment, he started with 3G upgrading at a cost of sh1 billion while in his last financial year as chairman, Safaricom announced investment of sh36 billion to expand its network coverage.
Under his leadership, Mr. Nganga has steered Safaricom into ensuring diversity and inclusion in all that we do. This commitment has seen the staff gender distribution stand at 51 percent women and 49 percent men whilst in management we have 35 percent women and 65 percent men. “On inclusion, we have 131 staff with various disabilities representing about 2.4 percent of the staff population. Out of this, 53 percent are women and 47 percent are men”, the statement read.
Among the highlights during his tenure is that M-PESA has been recognized as one of the Top 10 Most Influential Finance Projects of the last 50 years by Project Management Institute (PMI) in its 2019 Most Influential Projects list.
Through the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Safaricom has been committed to delivering connectivity and innovative products and services that will provide unmatched solutions to meet the needs of Kenyans by enabling access through its technologies and partners and by exploring opportunities in Health, Education and Energy.
“We sincerely thank Mr. Nganga for his dedication, counsel, commitment and leadership in the Board over the years. We wish you the very best in your future endeavors and we say, Ahsante sana for your service”, said CEO Peter Ndegwa.
He also welcomed Michael Joseph as Chairman. Mr. Joseph has served as non-executive board member since September 2008 and joins with a mandate to improve customer sentiment, greater brand consideration and to bolster our digital transformation agenda.
Michael Joseph also serves as Kenya Airways Chairman.
