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Congratulations upon what is your first full year results⏤ strong double-digit growth across all the major fundamentals. First of all, this was your first assignment as CEO; in a new market and working with new people⏤ looking back, in October 2022 when you took on the assignment, what were your fears and have they come to pass?
When I confirmed that I was taking up this job, one of my friends sent me an article about my predecessor. They said I had really big shoes to fill. Indeed it was a great legacy. I had to figure out where to start growing from. Looking back, time has really flown by very fast. I joined in October 2022, so this would be about 18 months now. The other day we were in a board meeting and I mentioned to the board that this was my first report to the board as CEO and someone joked that, Sylvia, you are now part of the furniture; you can no longer say there’s a problem with the past. You are now part of the problem, if there’s a problem and if there is something to be celebrated, you are a part of it.
When I think about it, when I came in, was I anxious? Yes, I was. True, I was coming from a bigger business- Safaricom; in fact, there was a time when I was running a team of about 4,000 people when I was Chief Consumer Business Officer. I was in charge of the call centre, sales and distribution, digital, research and marketing etc; it was big. But you know, this role is different because, in my Safaricom role, you still know there’s somebody who takes full accountability at the end of the day and you are being provided with the direction to take.
But coming to this role, and waking up to the reality that now the responsibility fully lay on me, I would be lying to say it wasn’t an intimidating thought. But I think that at the end of the day, how I tried to simplify this was to say, what does this boil down to? It boils down to making sure that customers are happy; making sure that the people who give us the licence to operate, and the government also understand what we are trying to do. They don’t necessarily have to be happy, but they have to be able to really understand what objective we are trying to drive and provide us the goodwill to be able to do that.
We also focused on making sure that our employees believe in what we are trying to do because, at the end of the day, you only lead, but if the team you’re leading does not believe in the mission, it will not get done. We also looked at our ecosystem partners, the guys who interact with customers every day, because we can’t be everywhere. Are they happy? Are they sufficiently remunerated? Are they growing as we grow? Are we all enjoying shared prosperity?
Those were the key things that I looked at. And I simplified and focused on those. I said let me focus on sorting out our relationship with government regulators and making sure they understand what MTN, is trying to do and making sure that whatever we are making, the government is benefiting as one of the players/actors in the value that we are creating.
Making sure that our employees are engaged- by becoming an accessible leader, creating the right culture, having an open door policy and making sure that people are comfortable in the spaces that they are working in. Making sure that our customers are engaged regarding the things that we are creating and then from the the brand perspective, getting to understand what is it that they didn’t like and then using those insights to be able to figure out what should be delivered to them.
I also focused on understanding distribution. The first week I came, I spent some time in the trade, because when you go to the trade; when you go to the market, you will know are your customers happy. Your distributors will tell you, whether they are selling more of your product or more of somebody else’s. The trade does not lie. Powerpoint slides do lie sometimes. Getting to the trade gets you the facts that you need to paint the reality that you can then act on.
I think simplifying things to that level, made it a lot easier to understand the job that needed to be done. I remember my first day when I came into the Exco- everybody told me all the great things that were being done, and in my head, I was like, what exactly am I going to say? So I turned to everyone and asked them, if we were to create a legacy after our contracts are done; what is the legacy that we want to create?
I think based on the feedback that I received from around the table, we crafted what would be a sufficient strategy. We then walked to the floor, met the call centre guys and walked to the trade and all our other stakeholders. Once I understood the job that needed to be done, it then felt familiar. It didn’t feel as intimidating, because it felt like the things that I was doing across the border on the other side and we got on with the business of executing that. So I am really happy to see where we have landed in terms of the outcomes that we have been able to achieve as well as the energy it has created in the organisation.
You came in a time when voice as a revenue stream was beginning to be written off- not just here, but globally as well. But we see you have been able to extract a whole 11.6% growth from a segment that was beginning to stagnate and had actually begun to decline in 2022. Are there some parallels to draw from Safaricom, your previous employer that you drew upon that perhaps this market wasn’t seeing?
Yes, when you talk about voice globally, it is declining. Its contribution to overall revenue is growing smaller. Yet there are still people who aren’t connected. There are still people who do not have coverage. So you can either use it as an excuse or say, before I start chasing new revenues, have I fully maximised the revenue potential that we have here?
I think when I came in, one of the things that immediately stood out for me⏤ when I went into the market, was that there was an opportunity for us to be able to go deeper in terms of the execution that we were driving on the ground, as well as doing a lot more collaboration (with the ecosystem).
Then, one of the things that also believe in- there’s a book I read called Extreme Ownership, it talks about how the military drives execution and one of the principles therein is around decentralising command. So, we decentralised command. You will keep hearing us talking about regionalisation. We created regional leadership teams- we had a regional leader who took accountability for all the KPIs in their region. They are responsible for the network, services, enterprises, and mobile money and they are given targets and are given all the support they need from headquarters.
The results you see today were a result of taking a few bets on a few big things⏤ taking the bet on our people, taking a bet on our network investment- we have always been lagging behind on data because we were second when it came to investing. So we went and made the case for additional investments; we made a case for a new spectrum. I can now see our data revenues are beginning to pick up because investments have now been put on the ground. The network is like our highway, if the highway is not well-tarmacked and it is full of potholes, no matter what you say, at the end of the day falls on deaf ears. So we have fixed and continue to fix our network, we are fixing our employee value proposition, focusing on our customer value proposition and pricing and making sure we are competitive because at times customers were thinking that we were very arrogant, and we’re not looking to connect to them in terms of making sure that they have the right proposition.
We have also worked with the government to sort out our relationship. You saw us at the Uganda-South Africa summit and you saw the support we gave to the just-ended NAM Summit. That has helped a lot, because when you’re seen as an enabler, then people are a lot more willing to make room for you to hear. You will not always get everything that you want. But at least they will listen to you. There are now more doors that are opening to hear us, than they were before, which I think is a good thing.
What is the future of voice? What are the drivers for growth moving forward?
Looking ahead, I think there is still room for short-term voice growth and that’s mainly because of the phone profiles in the country. So long as people continue to continue to sell more future phones than they sell smartphones in the country; as long as people keep buying more feature phones, there will still be some opportunity for voice. But I think it is a short-term opportunity.
If you think about the demographic dividend of this country- over 75% of this country is below 35 and they are largely digital natives, so many of them want to get onto the smartphone. That means that as more people get onto smartphones, then the voice segment begins to dwindle.
The issue with devices is really about the cost and that’s largely a function of taxation. Devices are expensive, but the government is now working on that in terms of setting up local smartphone assembling, which has tried to reduce the price. An entry 4G device which was probably USD50 a year ago has now come down to about USD40. But it’s still very expensive for the average Ugandan. Until you get to spaces where an entry-level smartphone device gets to below USD20, it becomes very hard to dramatically transform.
The challenge we have thrown ourselves is how to make sure that we don’t lose whatever the remaining opportunities in voice while we structure the business for long-term growth around the new spaces in data and fintech.
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And speaking of fintech, I think it is a low-hanging fruit. But last year, I don’t think we did as well as we would have wanted to. We have done well, but we could have done better. FinTech growth should be upwards of 20% in terms of growth. But the good thing is, at least our fundamentals around FinTech are growing much faster⏤ transaction value is growing faster than volume of transactions because of what we’re doing in terms of creating more of a cashless ecosystem. We needed to have innovated faster around lending and credit products. It took us a while, by the time we got our act together, we only launched these products in December 2023. That’s why there was a lag. But I’m confident in what we have on the ground and we should see this trajectory turning.
As for data, I look at data in two data is two spaces. The first is: who is going to own the home? Because whichever telco gets to a home before the other, in terms of fibre connectivity is going to be difficult to remove from there.
The second is then, how do we make sure that the massive investment, that is required in terms of the massive infrastructure perspective to deliver the quality of experience that customers want- I mean, every time I put something on social media, the detractor comments are around, internet experience and coverage. Customers want it faster. They wanted it now and they want it free. Right? But along with the investment is also the question of margins, because the the margins on voice business compared with the unit of economics on the data business, you have to be very careful in terms of how you make sure that you deliver what customers want. You have got to make sure that you’re not over-indexing on the investment. Balancing that is very critical -balancing, what you are doing on fixed, mobile and data- because yes because growth is coming from data but that growth has to come in at a margin that is sustainable for the business. If we are to follow the way the customers want it, it would be a challenge. At the end of the day, as we drive revenue, we have to watch the costs. So how do we optimise our costs, how do we digitise more, automate more and how do we increase staff productivity? How do we organise ourselves such that we are leaner but more highly productive? How do we structure our network and network costs for example?
You seem to have your game tight. What makes you not sleep well at night? What worries you?
Well, if I were to wake up in the morning and regulation has changed⏤ a slight change in regulation can suddenly have an impact on capex, opex and restrict you. So regulation is a key issue. I think having constant conversations with the regulator, so that we all understand what they’re doing, and they also understand what we’re driving is key. Arriving at a win-win and at least negotiating a mutual outcome that works for the industry is key.
The second thing, of course, is cyber security risks and the likely impact they could have, especially on data privacy protection. One cybersecurity risk can wipe out so much. That worries me too.
The other thing that worries me is the overall macroeconomic environment. You saw what happened in Kenya and the impact it had on the depreciation of the local currency. If that were to happen here- just a slight change could mean much. At the end of the day, it’s the things that could happen to the economy and to our ecosystem that we have no control over that worry me a lot.
Being the first female leader of what I believe is Uganda’s largest company and doing great things, should surely be one or two scores for the female business leader especially those still in the pipeline. What message do you have for decision-makers out there on women in leadership?
Well, what can I say that hasn’t been said before?
The difference between men and women, I believe lies in our makeup. The way women are, I think we need to be affirmed. If we are not getting people affirming us, we find it very difficult to raise our hands and say that we can do it. Therefore my first point of call is to all parents, especially fathers⏤ it is your sacrosanct duty to everyday affirm your children, especially the girl child. In a very patriarchal society that is Africa, we have to make our girls⏤ our daughters, our nieces our sisters etc believe that they can do as well as the boys. We cannot keep relegating them to the back. For example when the family is discussing news and current affairs, the girl shouldn’t be relegated to the kitchen. We have to start there and start very early otherwise then the girls start thinking that they are never supposed to be part of the big conversations.
When it comes to work, it is about being deliberate and having a lot more women who have courage; we need more courageous women who are willing to raise their hands and say they can do it. But we also need a lot more men who are willing to be allies, on this journey; men who are willing to support the women they are either leading or working with and tell them that, yes, they can.
The other challenge that women face is because they are nurturers they are always trying to make sure everyone in their ecosystem is alright and this sometimes gets into their daily work. What has worked for me, and I am not saying that I’m perfect, is just being clear about the things that I consider to be critical. Even my children, I have sat down with them and made them understand that I will not be there for everything, but if they tell me or if we have an understanding of what is so important for them, I will move heaven and earth trying to do that. As women, recognising what are the things that are important to us and then organising our lives around them, so that then we can manage our energy and time better is key.
I think the challenge we have as women is that many times we – first of all, lack the courage to believe that we can, and therefore there’s work that needs to be done to mentor and to lead by example and to role model that we actually can. How do we role model as we also try to figure out and integrate our choices?
I prefer to talk about integration and not balance because looking for balance is more about looking for perfection, which doesn’t exist. I don’t think it is really there. For example, I have integrated my children into my life and they have integrated me into theirs. They know or at least I try to make them understand what’s important for me and I also try to understand what’s important for them. They for example know this week I have a lot of board meetings, so I will probably get home late, and I will miss some of their calls. I also know that for example, this is exam week so they are too busy. So we all understand how we integrate into each other’s lives.
So the men should be asking themselves, how do we support our women to be able to make those choices? How do we support our daughters? How do we encourage them to raise their hands and encourage them to understand that you do not have to have 100% all the time? How do we encourage each other? How do we be conscious of the things that probably would hold us back, then openly speak about them, and then role model and mentor each other?
For the women in leadership or those in the pipeline, it is key to first see yourself as a leader before you see yourself as a woman. Being a woman is complementary because it influences the way you lead. I think the world needs a lot more female leaders, especially in the volatile world we live in, we need a lot more nurturing, a lot more empathy, and a lot more listening, which women do easily. It is about knowing that you’ve been called as a leader first and then after, asking yourself, how does the fact that you are a female leader, incrementally, allow you to lead differently, and at an advantage? It is also important to celebrate that and not be afraid of it. I think the more we embrace that; the more we encourage that in our daughters, and the more we will see a lot more women willing to raise their hands and not be afraid of the diversity that they bring to the table.
You know sometimes people think that diversity is about being male and female, but I think diversity is about the way we speak, the way we carry ourselves.
I remember my late former leader, the late Bob Collymore, may God rest his soul; when I got to the boardroom⏤ I first got to the boardroom when I was 34; that’s when I became a director in Safaricom, he asked me: “Sylvia, why are you changing your femininity? You are here because of your female leadership qualities that have made you a different kind of leader. Don’t get here and try to become a man”.
He had noticed I was trying to also be a bull in the boardroom like the rest of the men in there. He encouraged me to celebrate my female leadership style. He said I didn’t have to flex to be able to have influence. I think that gave me a lot of assurance. I started dressing more in dresses and less in trouser suits. I stopped trying to look like the men in the room.
So the more society encourages and supports more women leaders who are comfortable being themselves, the more we shall inspire inclusion in our spaces.