Stanbic Uganda Holdings Limited (SUHL), has appointed Mr. Tony Okao Otoa as the Executive Director of their new subsidiary- The Stanbic Business Incubator Ltd, CEO East Africa can exclusively reveal.
As the Executive Director, Otoa will lead the institutions key mandate of providing capacity building and development support to small and medium enterprises to enable them grow.
Until last month, Otoa was the Head, Enterprise Development at Stanbic Bank, a role he has played since June 2018. In that role, he run the Stanbic Business Incubator Programme- the bank’s social enterprise project that teaches Ugandan businesses how to do business in a business-like manner.
That programme has now been spun off the mainstream bank, to become a semi-autonomous institution and a subsidiary of Stanbic Uganda Holdings Limited.
SHUL which is headed by Patrick Mweheire, who is also the East Africa CEO for Standard Bank Group now is composed of three subsidiaries- Stanbic Bank, headed by Anne Juuko; The Stanbic Business Incubator Ltd, headed by Tony Otoa and Stanbic Properties Ltd (SPL), headed by Spencer Oyes Sabiiti. Mr. Sabiiti, who until April 2020 was the bank’s Real Estate Manager, was effective May 1st 2020 appointed as the General Manager, SPL, the arm that oversees the bank’s real estate properties.
The creation of the not-for-profit Stanbic Business Incubator Ltd is to make it independent of the profit-making banking and property arms, which will make it easier for the incubator to work with other like-minded non-profit entities as well as financial institutions that would ordinarily be seen as Stanbic Bank’s competitors.
Letters to My Younger Self: Winnie Nakimuli—"You Are Worthy Simply Because You Exist"Born out of a need to prop up SMEs that are Uganda’s engine of growth, by Stanbic Bank, Uganda’s biggest bank and initially tailored for SMEs focused on serving the nascent oil and gas industry, the programme has quickly gained demand across the entire SMEs and start-up spectrum.
Who is Tony Okao Otoa?
Mr Otoa, has been the incubator’s first leader, literally lifting the idea off the ground in 2018. In the two years he has run the programme, a total of 1,489 entrepreneurs from 650 SMEs have been successfully trained and graduated. Otoa has also been able to attract key partnerships with key entities such as Tullow Oil, GIZ, Mercy Corps and most recently United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Uganda National Oil Company (UNOC).
He has previously worked at Total E&P Uganda between September 2013 and June 2018 as the Public Affairs Coordinator/National Content Leader. It is from here that he joined Stanbic Bank as the Head, Enterprise Development. He has also been an Advisor on Oil & Gas to the Uganda Chamber of Mines and Petroleum (June 2017-July 2019) and a member of the Advisory Forum for the Skills for Oil & Gas Africa (SOGA) for 3 years between 2015 and July 2018. The Busoga College Mwiri old boy, holds a Masters of Laws and Bachelors of Science in International Relations and Affairs, both from the Oxford Brookes University in the United Kingdom.
