Vodacom’s Managing Director in the DRC, Anwar Soussa, has been picked as the head of the Global Partnership for Ethiopia. The partnership is a consortium led by Safaricom that won a telecom license to operate in Ethiopia.
Anwar, a Greek national, is not only the Managing Director of Vodacom DRC; he is also the Chair of mobile payments platform, M-Pesa, a position he has held since 2017.
He holds a Bachelor’s degree in business administration from the American College of Greece and a Master’s degree in marketing from Concordia University in Montreal (Canada).
Vodacom says that Anwar has cemented the company’s DRC operations as the largest outside of South Africa, by driving operational performance and brining in USD 500 million in service revenues for the first time, in 2020.
Anwar will be responsible for executing the partnership’s goals to bring about transformational economic and social impact in Ethiopia and positively enhance the lives of its over 112-million people while allowing the consortium to make headway in the country. As Managing Director he will report to the board of the Global Partnership for Ethiopia and Safaricom’s CEO.
Safaricom’s CEO announced last week that the company will be sending its Kenyan staff to Ethiopia to assist with the rollout of operations. The Ethiopia branch will be structured as a company, with its own CEO, Executive Team, and management team.
The partnership aims to start operations in 2022 after which it will gradually shift operations to the local workforce.