Business Times Africa Vol.8 No. 5 | Page 39

Uche Ofodile’ s passion to see young African leaders at their ultimate best
COVER STORY
Uche Ofodile’ s passion to see young African leaders at their ultimate best
Uche Ofodile is passionate about supporting Africa’ s next crop of leaders. She is a strong advocate for women empowerment through‘ forward leadership’ and has for the past 10 years been at the forefront in driving business turnarounds for top multi-national companies across Africa. She has taken up some of the most powerful jobs in Africa’ s telecommunication industry including CMO and more recently a CEO role in DRC
In this interview with Business Times Africa, Uche talks about her career rewarding experience in DRC and her desire to contribute to nurturing and developing talent in Africa.
BT: Welcome back from the DRC. How was the experience as a first time CEO and in DRC?
UO: It was by far one of my most exciting career experiences. First of all, it was a completely new experience, I had never worked in a francophone country so I had to try to quickly learn French. It was also my first CEO role. When I first arrived in DRC, I took the opportunity to travel across the country and I was pleasantly surprised at the beauty of the Democratic Republic of Congo. They have the most beautiful landscape.
From the moment I landed in Kinshasa, what was obvious was the energy of the people, they were so vibrant. My immediate thoughts were how can I harness this energy through use of technology? And indeed that was my challenge for the subsequent 2 years. Our strategic focus was to turnaround the commercial performance, improve the brand perception as well drive a much stronger employee performance and engagement. I believe we were able to achieve all 3 and this eventually led to an in-country acquisition by Orange. Looking back on it, I can honestly say this role was by far the most challenging and probably the most rewarding career experience.
BT: Tell us, in what ways is technology changing the lives of the people in DRC?
UO: As a business we were very eager to get people connected, especially online. Internet penetration in DRC is still below 10 percent and this was a big opportunity for us to drive data. Our goal was to find really innovative ways to get people online.
One way we approached this was through partnerships. One of our most successful partnerships was with Facebook to provide people with access. We launched a product that gave new data subscribers free access to Facebook and a number of other sites relevant to our customers and we were also able to do a workshop for some of our external stakeholders including very senior government officials. We were able to bring more people online and we also demonstrated to the government that it is a useful tool to speak directly to their constituents. It was brilliant.
One of the biggest challenges we faced was providing the Congolese with affordable Internet ready devices( a big consideration for
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