Recently, the MTN Group reshuffled its Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) in Africa. The South African-based company appointed THEMBA KHUMALO, currently the CEO of MTN Rwanda, as the new CEO of MTN Uganda.

Khumalo was previously an executive at MTN South Africa, before his appointment as CEO of MTN Swaziland. He spoke to The Business Times’ BERNA NAMATA about his experience during his term of office (almost 3 years) in Rwanda and his new appointment which takes effect next month.

What key achievements have you registered during your term of office?

I worked with a good team in this country. Our contribution has been quite significant to make the lives of the people better.

By the time I joined, MTN-Rwanda was a relatively small company but we have seen the company change significantly over the period.

We have improved connectivity and managed to increase the number of customers who are now close to 1.4 million active subscribers.

We have expanded the network beyond the city, a key area of focus during my term in office to increase penetration into the market.

We identified two key areas that were a big challenge—expensive terminals that were available worldwide and in the country.

This was a great barrier as it was extremely expensive and people had to spend about $30 dollars. We started hunting for low cost handsets in all markets across Europe, China and Middle East.

Through our group activities, we identified some useful devices coming from China, with good quality about $20 dollars in cost and this really helped to reduce the barrier to a larger extent.

My team went further to re- package our products like scrapping off the monthly subscription fees that was previously required to stay on the network. 

As business model it was identified as a barrier and we eventually planned for its phase-out in June 2007. The launching of the Home and Away package was also a major breakthrough not only for MTN but East Africa as a region.

It made sense that as government tries to integrate Rwanda into the East Africa Community, from a business point of view; we thought we would facilitate this process by offering this service.

The package allows customers to roam at affordable rates and receive calls for free within the region.  This innovation is unique to East Africa, because even Europe has not done it. It (Europe) is still struggling as the costs of roaming are still high.

What challenges did you face?

Rwanda’s challenges have been quite significant from what we have achieved.  There was a time when we had network issues.

But what was key here was to obviously think of strategies and what needs to be done to pull MTN once and for all from that kind of situation to a better and more reliable network.

I think we have been able to do this and I believe MTN Rwanda now has a good stable network and we have to ensure that its future growth is sustained.

From Swaziland, South Africa, what lessons are unique about the Rwandan market?

Every market is different but Rwanda specifically was different in many respects. As a developing country, it has a very clear vision about Information Communication Technology (ICT), well articulated by the authorities.

It is one of the few African countries where you find that it has a strategy on ICT and it is being followed. As an operation, we are an ICT player and this makes it easy for us to make a contribution.

There is a concise commitment by government to make sure that ICT strategy is moved and this is unique. The other one thing I can mention about Rwanda is that we have a more flexible licensing regime, in the sense that you are not restricted to do one thing compared to even more developed countries like South Africa.  It is actually almost a universal license.  

How do you view your new appointment? Is it a demotion or promotion?

Under the MTN Group of operations, as CEOs we work on a contract basis for two to three years in a country and what determines how you move to the next country is definitely performance.

From what has happened in Rwanda , I  believe we have really done a good job and moving from Rwanda to another bigger country, bigger operations shows the confidence MTN Group has in what I can deliver. Essentially, it is a promotion but it will also increase my scope of challenges than what I have been facing.

How do you feel about moving to a bigger and competitive market like Uganda with about five Telecommunication companies?

Competition is part of what we are supposed to do within MTN Group of operations, within the different markets across the different continents.

Fortunately, we have a culture of sharing things and working together. I am very confident and ready for the challenge to take MTN Uganda to the next level.

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