Kibati joins the company from Sanlam Kenya PLC, where he was Group CEO. He has held other senior leadership roles in both the private and public sector, including being the founding director general of Kenya’s Vision 2030 Secretariat and serving as Group managing director and CEO at East African Cables PLC.
“The Board is very grateful to Aldo for his leadership of the company over the last three years. Notable milestones achieved during his tenure include the expansion of the company’s network by over 50%, successful rebranding of the company to Telkom and rolling out of a 4G network, resulting in the company becoming the data operator of choice in the market,” said Eddy Njoroge, chairman of the Board. “We wish him the very best in his future endeavours.”
Kibati, who has also held non-executive Board positions in various institutions and is currently the chair of the Board of Directors at Lake Turkana Wind Power Limited, is taking over from Mareuse who is moving on to pursue other interests having led the company from mid-2016.
Commenting on the news, Mareuse said: “Since joining the company three years ago, we have made significant progress in the transformation journey initiated following the change in ownership. I would like to thank both management and staff for their dedication to the mission and incredible level of hard work put in to get us this far. I also wish to thank the Board as well as the shareholders for the support extended to the team and I wish Mugo and the company great success in the years ahead.”
Kibati said he was delighted to be joining Telkom at a critical moment of its transformation: “I look forward to working closely with the staff, Board, shareholders and all the company’s partners to get Telkom to the next level of its development in the near future.”
Telkom Kenya, which launched a KSH 150 million ($1.49m) data centre in August to boost colocation and data back-up, recently announced that the company was considering on making 500 employees redundant as part of an “intended workforce-restructuring exercise”.
Since 2016, Telkom has successfully rebranded, invested KSh 14 Billion into its business to expand its network coverage, launched 4G services and its MFS platform, T-kash.
Telkom has said that to enable it to invest more into the growth and sustainability of its business, it must align its cost structure and skill-set with its strategy. A statement said: “This requires Telkom to restructure its business, and as a result, this will impact the current and long-term needs of its workforce. This restructuring will enable Telkom to not only invest in its business but more importantly in its people.”
