Leading carbonated soft drinks and water maker, Crown Beverages Limited (CBL), have appointed Hilda Mbabazi FCCA, CPA, MBA, as its Chief Executive Officer.
CBL is the franchise bottler of global food, snack, and beverage giant, PepsiCo, Inc in Uganda. The company bottles Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Mirinda Fruity, Mirinda Orange, Mirinda Pineapple, Mirinda Green Apple, Evervess Tonic, Sting Energy Drink as well as Nivana and Aquafina water.
Mbabazi, replaces Paddy Muramiirah, the CEO since August 2016. She has been the Finance Director since March 2016. Before that, she was Head of Internal Audit between December 2009 and February 2019 and before that, she was a Senior, Audit and Assurance at KPMG Uganda for four and a half years.
Hilda is the company’s first female CEO since 1993 when the current shareholders⏤ Amos Nzeyi, Dr. Maggie Kigozi and Chris Kayoboke, acquired it from government, following its privatisation.
The trio, have transformed it from a struggling government-subsidised operation producing only 1.8m cartons of soda annually to a gigantic maker of over 65 million cartons and a top taxpayer and employer.
Hilda, a Gayaza High School alumna, is a graduate of Makerere University (B.Com Accounting) and holds an MBA from the Edinburgh Business School, Heriot-Watt University. She also completed her ACCA at the Management Accountancy Training Centre. She is also a Certified Information Systems Auditor (IT Audit) from the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA).