MTN Uganda assembles a solid local senior executives team to lead its next bold phase of growth. John C. Maxwell, an American author, speaker, and pastor who has written many books, primarily focusing on leadership, once said that a “leader's lasting value is measured by succession”, by how well that leadership creates more leaders instead of followers. As MTN prepares to mark its 21st anniversary this October, we examine what impact the telecom giant has had on local skills transfer.

MTN Uganda and the Uganda Communications Commission, on 1^st July 2020 signed a landmark USD 100 million (approximately UGX 371.5 billion) 12-year Second National Operator (SNO) License.

This milestone agreement was signed just three months as the telecom company prepared to cross its 21^st anniversary- 21 transformational years that have seen the creation of Uganda’s largest telecoms company- with 95 percent coverage of the population;  approximately 13.5 million subscribers, seven million of whom use MTN mobile money and three million are active data users.

But one fact remains largely uncelebrated- MTN has not only emerged into an industry leader, but has over the years, created a crop of homegrown telecoms talent where there was almost none a two decades ago. That the future of the company in Uganda would be led and delivered by a largely inbred team of Ugandan telecom executives.  

Take Andrew Bugembe, for example, who on April 1^st, 2020 started work at MTN Uganda as its Chief Finance Officer. He is the first indigenous Ugandan to take up the prestigious position in MTN Uganda’s 21-year history. He replaced Mike Blackburn who retired early this year having served as the telecom’s CFO since 2011. Bugembe’s rise to one of the top 3 positions at the UGX1.6 trillion in annual turnover, is part of the company’s internal succession planning and leadership development programme that seeks to prepare local talent for future Senior Leadership opportunities within the company and the Group. 

As part of this process, Bugembe who joined MTN in January 2006, has been through various executive and senior management finance roles in 5 MTN countries including CFO roles in Liberia and MTN Congo Brazzaville. Some of the key highlights of his career at MTN include concluding a $300m syndicated medium-term facility, in a Project Finance deal that won an award for the best telecoms deal in Europe Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) in 2012. Bugembe’s experience in MTN’s West Africa operations especially during the Ebola crisis and the drop in oil prices while in Central Africa, has battle-hardened him to take over the finance role at MTN Uganda during the difficult Covid-19 pandemic time.

MTN’s almost all-Ugandan General Manager’s Club 

But Bugembe is not alone- he joins MTN Uganda’s country leadership team of fifteen hardnosed telecom executives, twelve (80 percent) of whom are Ugandan and four of the twelve are women.

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Other than the Bugembe, the other Ugandan executives, that are part of MTN’s solid local senior executive team leading the telecom company’s next bold phase of growth, include: Enid Edroma, the General Manager, Corporate Services; Dorcas Muhwezi, General Manager Customer Care; Nicholas Beijuka, General Manager, Capital Projects and Judith Namugenyi, General Manager, Internal Audit and Forensics. Others are: Juliet Kakai Nsubuga, General Manager Wholesale & Carrier Services; Stephen Mutana, General Manager Mobile Financial Services; Ibrahim Senyonga, General Manager Enterprise Business Unit; Joseph Bogera, General Manager Sales & Distribution; Kenneth Kiddu, Ag. General Manager Business Intelligence and Samuel Gitta General Manager Risk & Compliance.

The only three roles occupied by expatriates are: the Chief Executive Officer, Wim Vanhellepute; Chief Technical Information Officer, Ali Monzer, and Ag.Chief Marketing Officer, Sen Somdev.

Most of the above Ugandan members of the Exco team have each worked for MTN Uganda for over 10 unbroken years, a testament to the company’s high staff satisfaction levels and retention rates. Take Michael Sekadde , the General Manager, Human Resources for example- he has been at MTN for over 21 uninterrupted years, having joined the telecoms company shortly after its launch in 1999 as a Training and Development Manager and he has never looked back.

Dorcas Muhwezi, the General Manager Customer Care is also one of the ‘MTNers’ who has spent 80 percent of her working career at MTN. The University of Manchester trained Electrical and Electronics Engineer, joined MTN in 2004 as a Senior Fixed Lines Planning Engineer, and worked her way upwards to become the Manager Quality Assurance and eventually the General Manager Customer Experience in 2015. In between, she even found time to pursue an MSc, Computer Science and Communications Engineering from the University of Duisburg-Essen between 2001-2004.

A leader creates more leaders and not followers

In a recent interview with CEO East Africa Magazine, Wim, said that everything that MTN does is built around its people and a philosophy that “happy staff give you a happy customer.”

“I do believe, the heart of every business starts from the inside. If your people are not passionate about the company that they work for and the brand that they represent. You cannot have the customer at the heart of your business if the people, do not believe and are not living that purpose,” he said, adding that it is this belief that underpins the company’s people policy.  

 “MTN-Uganda is an equal opportunity employer. Out of a total 1,065 staff, 570 (56 percent) are male and 495 (44 percent are) female. We believe in diversity and inclusion in all our people processes- everyone with the required competencies and capabilities has an opportunity to grow within the ranks in the Organization,” Wim says adding that three of the 4 females on the company’s Exco team were “groomed and developed internally” and are all excelling at their roles.

“Everyone has an equal chance if they possess the requisite competency, capability, and attitude to grow in their careers. We believe in inclusion. MTN accepts everyone irrespective of their differences e.g. gender, age, race, lifestyles, etc and  our goal is to create an environment where  anyone regardless of these differences can succeed,” Wim proudly says.

To affirm this, Michael Sekadde, the General Manager, Human Resources told CEO East Africa that for example, out of the 68 employees who were promoted from 2019 to-date, 38 are female.

“We have a deliberate succession planning and leadership development programme that proactively identifies top talented employees across the company and puts them on a talent development programme that creates personal development plans for each of them, building on their current competencies and future required capabilities,” Sekadde, explains.

“This is done over a period of time and often it involves formal training, on-the-job training, shadowing and secondment to other operations with the MTN Group as part of their development. This has worked for the Company’s skills transfer Agenda and we have had some success stories where internal local Ugandans have now replaced former expatriates as part of the Succession Planning Programme,” he proudly says.

Sekadde says that besides Bugembe, Stephen Mutana, the General Manager- Mobile Financial Services is another success story of an inbred resource that now fills a role previously held by an expatriate. Mutana has worked with MTN Uganda for over 18 years, including five years at the MTN Group, where he rose to the General Manager Customer Experience, heading teams in Customer Operations across 21 countries. He returned to Uganda in April 2020 to take up the General Manager, Financial Services Division at MTN Uganda. 

“The robust succession planning programme is empowering internal local talent to grow within the organization and within the MTN Group. For example, MTN Uganda currently  has ‘exported’ 15 local staff across the MTN Group as expatriates to transfer skills and knowledge,” concludes Sekkadde.

Wim concludes that with the team he has assembled, he is confident that MTN Uganda will deliver on its promise to deliver “a bold digital life to all our customers through diligent innovations, high-quality voice, data and mobile money services” across Uganda.