ONE ON ONE: Airtel Uganda Marketing Director Henry Kamau Njoroge talks about his new role and the recently announced partnership with UNCDF

Six months into his new role, Airtel Uganda Marketing Director Henry Kamau Njoroge talks to CEO East Africa Magazine about his role and vision for the telecom, and what the recently announced partnership with UNCDF is meant to achieve. Below is the full interview

Who is Henry Kamau?

I’m Henry Kamau Njoroge, the Marketing Director Airtel Uganda. I live and love brands and marketing. You will however be surprised to learn that I am a graduate of Finance from the University of Nairobi and a CPA from Strathmore University, Kenya, plus an alumnus of INSEAD and Harvard Business School via their Executive Global Leadership Program and Senior Executive Program – Africa (SEPA) respectively. Currently, I’m pursuing an MBA from United States International University (Kenya) (USIU).

Previous work experience?

I have worked across several locations in the continent. Cumulatively, I have 20 years’ experience in various industries; 4 years in banking at Citibank and Equity Bank then moved to consulting at PWC for 3 years where I got a chance to work in Ghana, Zambia, and Tanzania, then moved to telecoms – Airtel Kenya, Vodacom Mozambique. At Airtel Kenya, I held the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) role for 3 years before moving to Vodacom Mozambique for 7 years, which saw me rise to the Chief Officer – Consumer Business Unit position. Subsequently, I rejoined Airtel Africa in Feb 2021 as the CMO.

It has been more than six months in the Marketing Director role at Airtel Uganda, how has your journey been?

My six months have been a rollercoaster ride, I must admit. I had missed the energy and liveliness that drives Airtel. I have a wonderful team who have helped me settle and succeed. The leadership team is also very supportive at work and ensured I settled socially. Uganda is also very welcoming to me and my family, warm people, warm weather with huge potential in the years to come.

I am getting a grip of things now and I am very grateful for the support and look forward to more learning and interactions, more wins, more smiles, and celebrations.

What is your role and vision for Airtel as the Marketing Director?

Enriching the lives of our customers is our vision as Airtel Africa. As a member of the leadership team in Airtel, it is my responsibility to drive, live by this mission and lead this by example. It is also my responsibility to drive this vision through our engrained values – Alive, Inclusive and Respectful. As a marketing director I will ensure our Brand is Alive, Inclusive, and Respectful and live by our purpose of enriching the lives of all our customers in Uganda, while leaving no one behind.

Speaking of innovations, any key marketing highlights so far?

Of course, there are. I will pick the major ones.

Firstly, to support our customers during the COVID-19 lockdowns facilitating learning and working from home while turbo-charging the online commerce to address the limited movements, we launched Chillax Data Bundles that do not expire allowing our customers to browse like the Queens and Kings they are to us. We also launched Work-From-Home bundles and revamped our Airtel-Broadband offers to support our customers working from home.

Secondly, we launched the Airtel Supersaver Account, the first mobile based savings account in Uganda in partnership with KCB Bank with an incredible 5% annual interest earned. The Supersaver account empowers every Ugandan with an Airtel SIM to save for their dreams and goals driving financial inclusion in Uganda.

Thirdly, we launched International Money Transfers to the neighboring South Sudan opening opportunities for our people from June. 

And lastly, we continue to enhance and improve our Airtel self-care Application to empower our customers to manage their sims and Airtel Money account through an easy to setup and easy to use mobile applications on their smartphones.

Airtel recently announced a partnership with UNCDF. Tell us about this partnership and its relevance to our market.

Yes, we did. On Wednesday, September 22nd 2021, we launched a collaboration with UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) to onboard 300 new Airtel Money agents, 400 Airtel Pay merchants, 500,000 active Airtel Money customers to reach the targeted 1 million newly registered Airtel Money customers in the North and West Nile regions of Uganda.

The partnership aims to support the National Government’s strategy, the Uganda National Financial Inclusion Strategy 2017 – 2022, to ensure women, youth and rural populations at large are reached by services of the finance sector whilst building the digital infrastructure necessary to broaden savings, investment, insurance and reduce barriers to access to financial services. The Airtel Money and UNCDF partnership will also increase digital financial services access and usage, and improve financial security through financial inclusion.

Airtel’s work with UNCDF, will deliver more service points in remote rural areas, helping to improve Uganda’s financial inclusion and driving digital growth for the wider economy. The bold commitment builds on the ongoing collaboration with UNCDF in implementing the “Leaving No One Behind in the Digital Era” strategy launched in 2019.

Anything exciting we should expect from Marketing before end of year? 

Watch this space!

What values do you stand for?

I live by 3 principles professionally and in my personal life, i.e.

• The greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall
  • Making every interaction count
  • In the end, our families and our heath come first
• Any last words?

I finish with two quotes. First is a quote from my dear big brother Dr. Maranga who keeps reminding me that ‘Life is a journey and not a destination’. The second one (This is a long one but I loved it). I picked it from @MosesRutahigwa tweets. It goes like ‘You will never know your best until you are stretched. You have enormous potential to recover from defeat, endure hardships and not break and even win BIG where no one expected you to. Give yourself a fighting chance, STAY IN THE GAME!’