Airtel seeks to benefit from talent poached from rival mobile carriers in the region. This is after they hired Farhad Khan who comes from MTN South Africa where he was Chief Sales and Distribution Officer to be Chief Commercial Officer at Airtel Africa.
Daddy Mukadi Bujitu on the other hand gets in from Vodacom Group where he was Executive Head of International Regulatory and Exacutive, International Commercial Legal. Daddy joins Airtel Africa as Chief Regulatory Officer. See below press release:
Nairobi, Kenya, January 5, 2015 – Bharti Airtel, a leading telecommunications services provider with operations in 20 countries across Africa and Asia, has today announced the appointments of Farhad Khan as the Chief Commercial Officer and Daddy Mukadi Bujitu as Chief Regulatory Officer for Airtel Africa. Farhad Khan, the incoming Chief Commercial Officer, will join Airtel from the MTN Group. His most recent role was at MTN South Africa, where he held the position of Chief Sales & Distribution Officer since August 2013. He joined MTN in February 2003 as General Manager – Market Segment Strategy. In October 2005, he was appointed as the Marketing and Customer Relations Executive at MTN IranCell. In June 2009, he was appointed as CEO of MTN Zambia. In January 2012, he was appointed as the Executive – Enterprise Business at the MTN Group Office, before taking up his most recent role.
Daddy Mukadi Bujitu, the new Chief Regulatory Officer, joins Airtel Africa from the Vodacom Group where he was the Executive Head, International Regulatory and the Executive, International Commercial Legal. Before joining the Vodacom Group, Mr. Mukadi was the Group Corporate Legal Counsel at The Gateway Communications Group. He has also had successful career stints at the Mkhabela Huntley Adekeye Inc, and at Communication Users Associations of South Africa. He holds a Masters of Law degree in Communications Law (LLM) and an Executive Development Diploma; both from the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa. He also holds a Bachelor of Law (LLB) from the University of Lubumbashi, DRC.
Speaking on the appointments, Christian de Faria, Airtel Africa’s CEO said, “As Chief Commercial Officer, Farhad will leverage his deep and broad commercial experience to focus on our commercial strategy for Africa, build a strong marketing team to drive a winning consumer value proposition and reinvigorate our Go-To-Market processes. Farhad takes over from Andre Beyers who left the business at the end of December to pursue other interests outside Airtel.”
Mr. De Faria added “As the Chief of Regulatory for our Africa operations, Mukadi will craft a long term regulatory strategy for Africa and proactively build relationships with our key stakeholders.” Mukadi takes over from Mamadou Kolade, who is leaving at the end of January this year. He added: “We thank Mamadou for the 17 years of great service and contribution to this company. Through his excellent relationships, we have been able to ensure timeous renewals of Licenses even under difficult circumstances and mitigated a number of regulatory risks across our 17 markets. Please join me in warmly welcoming Farhad and Daddy to the Airtel Family and in wishing them rewarding careers at Airtel.”
