IN REVIEW: Sylvia Mulinge’s 1 year at MTN Uganda

This October, Slyvia Mulinge made 1 year as MTN Uganda’s Chief Executive Officer.

Sylvia, the telco’s first female Chief Executive Officer, started work on the 3rd of October 2022. Incidentally, this month, MTN Uganda also marks 25 years since it entered the Ugandan market.

Amongst her key highlights, Sylvia has in this one year, maintained double-digit growth at the telco, which is Uganda’s largest, headlined by a 15% growth in service revenue ⏤ from data, fintech, voice and other sources, from UGX1.1 trillion in H1 2022 to UGX1.25 trillion in H1 2023.
H1 2023, is her first full reporting period since she joined mid-H2 2022.

Data revenue in H1 2023 grew by 22.1% to UGX 290.2 billion from UGX237.6 billion in H1 2022 while, Fintech revenue grew by 18.6% to UGX 358.3 billion from UGX302.1 billion in H1 2022. As expected, voice revenue grew, slower than data and fintech, at 9.4%, from UGX497.7 billion to UGX544.7 billion.

Profit After Tax (PAT) increased by 17.8% to UGX 228.0 billion from UGX193.6 billion on the back of an 11.2% growth in mobile subscribers, 21.4% in data subscribers and 11.6% in active fintech users.

In July 2023, she also led the telco’s ambitious 5G network rollout.

Sylvia, who was named in the 2021-2022 Top 45 Most Influential Women in Digital Transformation in Africa edition by the dx5ve (formerly CIO Africa Magazine), has since arriving in Uganda, stepped up as a thought leader and has championed some major key causes beyond just MTN Uganda and the telco industry.

For example, this September, Sylvia with MTN Uganda as the headline sponsor, led other CEOs under the Forum Of South African Businesses In Uganda (FOSABU) to put together a successful return leg of the Uganda-South Africa Trade & Investment Summit that ran between the 5th – 6th September 2023, at Speke Resort Munyonyo.

A passionate champion of women’s skilling, financial inclusion and empowerment, she is also championing the MTN@25 Advancing Women Entrepreneurs (AWE) program. The programme is being run in association with The Innovation Village, the Private Sector Foundation Uganda (PSFU), ATC Uganda, dfcu Bank and NSSF Uganda. It seeks to empower women-led enterprises, especially in the technology space by creating pathways for business representation, strategic positioning, supplier base and financial inclusion.

Sylvia believes that those women who have made it, alongside the rest of society, have a responsibility to raise their voices and actions to make life easier for those women who are still disadvantaged as well as those still in the pipeline, to ensure they sustainably enter the economic earning bracket.

“Leadership is a privilege. It’s a privilege to do good. It’s a privilege to create opportunities for others. It’s a privilege to be able to derive a different narrative about capitalism and how profit is made. Because if you are making a profit at the expense of the ones that we are representing in society, then I think that that profit is not going to be sustainable in the long term,” she told a forum of stakeholders at the AWE programme’s launch yesterday, October 2, 2023.

“There is no way we can talk about enabling women’s progress if you’re not allowing them to participate in the spaces where economic value is being created, or simply said where money is being made,” she adds, reasoning that addressing the gender disparity in economic empowerment and decision making is “no longer a matter of choice” but an “urgent necessity”.

“Neglecting the brilliance, resourcefulness and the untapped potential of half of our world’s population, otherwise called women, not only stifles innovation but also hinders societal progress,” she reiterated.

“We must proactively be involved in conversations that are shaping the role that women are playing in our society, as their inadequate representation constrains our country’s development, leaving vital intellect and creative potential underutilised which is essential for enhancing productivity,” she concludes.