Stanbic’s Anne Juuko; EABL’s Jane Karuku and NMB Bank’s Ruth Zaipuna named among Africa’s 74 most influential women business leaders

Anne Juuko, the Chief Executive Officer of Uganda’s Stanbic Bank; Ruth Zaipuna, the Chief Executive Officer of Tanzania’s leading bank, NMB Bank Plc and Jane Karuku, the Group Chief Executive Officer of East African Breweries Limited, have been named amongst the second annual Africa.com Definitive List of Women Chief Executive Officers.

The list that is run to mark International Women’s Day, by Africa.com, celebrates women who run big businesses in Africa. Data used to generate the list was sourced from Bloomberg according to the statement released by Africa.com.

“In short, the list represents the women who run big businesses in Africa.  All of the women-run businesses with   Revenue of USD100 million or more.  No other list of successful African businesswomen is grounded in quantifiable research,” Africa.com, said in a statement.

The list of 74 women leaders, includes such leaders as Natascha Viljoen, the Chief Executive Officer of the Anglo American Platinum; Nompumelelo Thembekile (Mpumi) Madisa, the Chief Executive Officer of the Bidvest Group and Leila Fourie, the Chief Executive of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.

Other women leaders from East Africa on the list, include Rosemary Oduor, the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Kenya Power & Lighting Ltd, Rebecca Miano, the Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer of the Kenya Electricity Generating Company and Nasim Devji, the Group Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Diamond Trust Bank.

Other East African women leaders on the list, include Mitwa Ng’ambi, the Chief Executive Officer of MTN Rwanda Telecommunications, Kendi Ntwiga-Nderitu, the Country Lead, Kenya for Microsoft and Brenda Mbathi, the President General Electric East Africa. 

Commenting about the list, Africa.com Chair Teresa Clarke said, “The 2022 list features 74 women.  This represents a meaningful expansion over the 50 women who made the 2021 list.  This is largely explained by our intentional change in our methodology.  In the first year, we used market capitalization of listed companies as the only financial metric by which to qualify companies for consideration. In 2022, we changed the qualification to be either large scale market capitalization or large-scale   Revenue.  By making   Revenue a screening mechanism, we brought in a larger group of companies from across the continent, thereby diversifying the geographic representation of the list significantly.”        

The full list of the 2022 Africa.Com Definitive List of Women Chief Executive Officers