Bob Collymore To Remain Safaricom’s CEO Until 2020

Telecommunications giant Safaricom has extended Bob Collymore’s contract by 12 more months to cover for the time he was out on medical leave.

This means that he will remain as the CEO until 2020.

“I am not going anywhere. I will be here for another one year till 2020,” said Mr. Collymore. He was speaking at the sidelines of the Africa Shared Value Summit in Nairobi on Thursday, May 23.

In October 2017, he took a nine-month medical leave to receive cancer treatment in London.

Despite earlier reports that the CEO was planning to leave the company in 2019, Safaricom dismissed them, saying that it was yet to make a decision.

Reuters last month had reported that Collymore had decided not to renew his contract with the telco due to health reasons. The Kenyan government had then insisted that he be succeeded by a Kenyan, which delayed the announcement of his replacement.

Collymore added that he intends to focus on Safaricom’s e-commerce sector which he noted has not been performing as expected in recent years along with scaling-up the agri-business sector.

He has been Safaricom’s CEO since 2010 during which the telco has grown into East Africa’s most profitable company. This is credited to the widely popular money transfer service M-Pesa and an ever-growing customer base.

Safaricom has also seen its share price increase by more than 400 percent to Sh26 during his tenure.

Appointment of a Chief Executive Officer was a preserve of Britain’s Vodafone until it transferred these powers to South Africa’s Vodacom after a share swap in 2017. Vodafone then remained with a five percent stake, while Vodacom gained a 35 percent stake equal to the Kenyan government’s stake.