Anwar Soussa has been picked to lead the Global Partnership for Ethiopia, an international consortium comprising Safaricom Plc, Vodacom Group, Vodafone Group, Sumitomo Corporation and CDC Group. The company was awarded a licence to operate telecom services in Ethiopia in May this year.
48-year-old Anwar is the Managing Director of Vodacom DRC and the Chairperson of Vodacash. Under his leadership, Vodacom DRC grew to be the largest Vodacom subsidiary outside of South Africa, and for the first time surpassed the $500 million mark in service revenue in 2020.
As managing director of Global Partnership for Ethiopia, Anwar is expected to formulate strategies and plans for the newly created consortium. He is charged with ensuring the delivery of quality and affordable mobile and internet connectivity enabling millions more Ethiopians to access quality telecom services.
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Anwar will lead the Ethiopian Telcom Company on behalf of Safaricom and the other four shareholders. He will report to the Board of the Ethiopia entity and Safaricom PLC CEO, Peter Ndegwa.
Anwar has extensive knowledge of the telecommunications industry having worked as the CEO of Airtel Uganda and Chad. He also served in different senior roles at MTN and Digicel. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the American College of Greece (Degree) and a master’s degree in Marketing from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.
Telecommunication giant, Safaricom, is the largest shareholder in the Ethiopian Telco with a 55.7% ownership, followed by Japanese Sumitomo Corporation with a 27.2% stake. Vodacom has a 6.2% ownership while the rest of the company is owned by UK’s development agency, CDC group.
According to the Ethiopian government, the Safaricom-led consortium is projected to create 1.5 million new jobs and attract $8.5 billion in investments over the next 10 years
Miriam Wangui of The Kenyan Wallstreet contributed to this article.
