Meet Godfrey Kamau and Gift Shoko, the two men sent by Equity Group to sanitise and stabilise the rocky Equity Bank Uganda ship Before facing headwinds this year that climaxed in the exit of the Managing Director, Equity Bank Uganda was Equity Group's third-largest subsidiary in terms of deposits, lending, assets, and revenues. To stabilise the ship and restore stakeholder confidence, the Group has deployed some of its trusted hands and looked outside the Group for more capable hands. CEO East Africa Magazine shines a light on some of the senior executives deployed to lead this mission.

Since Equity Bank Uganda discovered a UGX65 billion (approximately USD 18 million) digital fraud, the bank has been in the eye of the storm, causing a whirlwind of losses, staff exits, and reputation damage.

Not only did it slide from profit to loss—from a profit of UGX45.8 billion in 2022 to a loss of UGX18 billion in 2023—but the fraud, coupled with a growing non-performing loans book that more than doubled from UGX90.7 billion in 2022 to UGX191.2 billion in 2023, began to rock the Equity Bank ship in Uganda.

Losses aside, the period of instability and necessary purging that followed the fraud discovery has also seen several senior executives leave the bank. The most recent was the Managing Director, Anthony Kituuka, who was announced on November 30th, 2024. There is divided opinion over whether he was fired or willingly resigned—call it jumping the rocky ship, if you like.

Over and above, Kenneth Onyango, the Executive Director of Commercial Banking who was implicated in the digital fraud, was fired and imprisoned; we also understand between March and November 2024, several senior executives have since resigned from the bank to pursue their career ambitions elsewhere. 

They include Kezia Dorothy Asiimwe, the CFO, who resigned in July 2024, apparently after a heated exchange and subsequent dress-down by James Mwangi, the Group CEO. She was replaced by Richard Muraguri Wambugu, who was sent in from Nairobi.

Subsequently, the Group also sent in Andrene Terry as Head of Operations and Bernard Ritho to oversee Payments and Channels, where digital banking largely falls.

Immediately after the fraud was discovered, Equity Group sent one of its trusted and experienced soldiers- Godrey Kariuki Kamau, at the time, the Group Director, Operations‒ to Uganda to head the operation to investigate and catch the fraudsters, plug the holes that made the fraud possible and support management to stabilise the ship.

Godfrey Kamau, or Kamau, as he is mononymously known in the Equity Bank corridors, is a  seasoned banking professional with over 20 years of experience.

In September 2024, he was made the substantive Director of Banking Operations in Uganda, with a core assignment to “support the Managing Director in the overall formulation of the bank’s business strategy and ensure the objectives are effectively and efficiently met”.

On his LinkedIn page, he describes his new role as also involving leading the development of bank systems, procedures, and processes, providing leadership to the bank’s ICT, Legal, Finance, operations, and credit functions, and reviewing the bank’s financial viability and cost structure regularly.

However, those in the know say that although he should ordinarily have reported to the Ugandan Managing Director, he “reported more to the Group than to the local Managing Director.”

Before becoming the Group’s Director of Operations, he was Equity Kenya’s Head of Digital Operations. Before joining Equity Group in 2020, he was the Chief Operations Officer at Kenya’s Family Bank for nearly three years and the Head of Operations at Ecobank Kenya for nearly three years. He also spent over 15 years in various operations and project management roles at Barclays in Kenya, Mauritius, and Egypt.

On his LinkedIn page, he describes himself as”passionate about high performance to exacting operational excellence”. 

“A customer-centric person with the energy to deliver a high customer experience, recognised for managing projects with a 100% success rate, and indeed awarded the same. I am a visionary leader who finds innovative solutions and products to grow the organisation’s bottom line. I stand out by being enthusiastically faster, creatively smarter in thinking and giving an outlook given the global market dynamics. I deliver intellectual leadership, far-reaching insights and cutting-edge solutions,” he describes himself.

One Equity Bank Uganda staff member who has worked with Kamau described him as “extremely brilliant, very assertive, and results-oriented.” 

“Weaklings can’t stand his delivery methods. “What’s your win since yesterday?” is a common case with his approach, and this has rubbed everyone on their toes to have something to report daily, including both Head Office leaders and branch teams, from relationship managers to Managers,” said the staff who spoke anonymously to CEO East Africa Magazine. 

Gift Shoko, the new Executive Director of Commercial Banking 

To replace Kenneth Onyango as Executive Director of Commercial Banking, Equity Group, in July 2024, poached Gift Shoko from NCBA Group, where he was the Group Director of Regional Business and, in that role, oversaw the operations of regional subsidiaries.

NCBA Group is one of East Africa’s five largest financial groups, with KES 678.8 billion (USD 5.2 billion) in assets as of September 2024.

Before joining Equity Bank Uganda, Shoko was the Group Director of Regional Business at NCBA Group from March 2021 to September 2015. Prior to that, he became the Commercial Bank of Africa (CBA) CEO for Tanzania in September 2015. When CBA merged with NC Bank in 2019 to form NCBA Group, he was retained as CEO for the Tanzania operation until March 2021, when he was seconded to the NCBA Group office to oversee regional subsidiaries.

Before that, he was the Managing Director of New Frontier Capital in Harare, Zimbabwe, the COO of Trust Bank, and the Group Chief Executive of Trust Holdings.

According to his profile on the bank’s website, Gift Shoko “has rich commercial multi-regional banking and leadership experience across markets in Africa, with a good appreciation of the Ecosystem and Sectoral Banking approach”. 

“His specialities are corporate and retail banking, business strategy, banking operations, stakeholder management, regulatory compliance, executive coaching, and mentoring. Gift has a proven history of spearheading successful turnaround and expansion strategies, nurturing strategic partnerships and orchestrating digital transformation initiatives,” the bank describes him.

Gift holds a Bachelor of Business Studies and Computer Science Degree from the University of Zimbabwe and a master’s in business administration—Banking and Finance (LIMA, Nicosia, Cyprus). 

He holds various diplomas, including an Advanced Diploma in Business Administration ABE, UK), a Diploma in Banking (Institute of Bankers in Zimbabwe), an Advanced Diploma in Credit (Institute of Bankers South Africa) and a Diploma in Treasury Management and Trade Finance (Institute of Bankers South Africa).

A bank staffer describes Gift as a “very good leader” who is “extremely hands-on.”

“He goes to the field and engages customers door-to-door,” the staffer further described him.