Safaricom announced yesterday the appointment of Sylvia Mulinge to the position of managing director at Tanzania’s Vodacom. Mulinge has been the director of the consumer business unit at Safaricom PLC.
Vodacom Tanzania, a subsidiary of the Vodacom Group in the UK, has 12 million customers, about 8 million M-Pesa users, and controls nearly 39 percent of Tanzania’s telecom market. Vodacom Group owns 40 percent of Safaricom.
Bob Collymore, Safaricom’s CEO, said Mulinge will take over from Ian Ferrao effective 1 June. Collymore also said Mulinge has shown exceptional leadership skills that helped the company navigate through harsh times over the period she worked for the mobile operator.
“Throughout her 17-year career, she has built a reputation as one of Kenya’s outstanding business leaders, a mentor and go-getter, qualities that we at Safaricom have benefited greatly from and will deeply miss,” he said.
Mulinge has overseen the growth of Safaricom’s enterprise business, she has led the reorganisation strategy, and has overseen early identification of industry trends like customer segmentation which has allowed Safaricom to offer customer-centric products and services.
Safaricom employed Mulinge in February 2006 and took up the position of director consumer business in March 2015. Before joining Safaricom, Mulinge worked for Unilever.
Collymore said Charles Wanjohi will replace Mulinge as the interim director where he will be reporting directly to the him.
