42 female leaders graduate from year-long Safaricom Mentorship Program
A partnership between Safaricom (NSE: SCOM) and Mowgli Mentoring, a specialist mentoring organisation focused on driving inclusive economic and social change, has seen 42 female female leaders graduate from the year-long Safaricom Mentorship Programme empowering and supporting the advancement of female leaders within the organisation.
Safaricom is committed to maintaining gender diversity and the program, established in 2018, is part of the service provider’s Women in Leadership initiative that seeks to grow the number of women in senior leadership positions within the organisation.
“As we strive to achieve our gender diversity agenda, one challenge is to deal with a leaking talent pipeline. We continue to challenge ourselves to establish sustainable ways of addressing existing talent gaps and through this program, we aim to equip our talent with the mindsets, skillsets, and toolsets to succeed,” said Paul Kasimu, Chief Human Resources Officer, Safaricom.
While Safaricom has attained 50:50 gender representation across the entire workforce, the percentage of women in Senior Management roles currently stands at 35%. Through the mentorship program, Safaricom seeks to grow this percentage to 40% by 2025 by creating a pool of talent ready to assume leadership roles.
Implemented by Mowgli Mentoring, this program saw 14 female Senior Leaders trained as mentors who in turn supported the personal and professional development of 28 female mentees selected from the organisation’s pool of future leaders.
“Workplace mentorship has been proven to develop and retain top talent which in effect strengthens an organisation’s leadership pipeline at both the senior and junior levels. Within this program, we supported mentees to explore ideas, gain clarity of their goals and take steps towards them, build their confidence, communicate more effectively, increase efficiencies within their departments, and rise through the ranks,” said Kathleen Bury, Chief Executive Officer, Mowgli Mentoring.
To date, Mowgli Mentoring has run over 115 mentoring programs across 17 countries within Africa, the Middle East and the United Kingdom, supporting over 2200 mentors and mentees through their unique 360-degree mentoring approach that supports both personal and professional development.
About Safaricom
Safaricom transforms lives.
We provide voice, data, financial services and enterprise solutions for a range of customers, small businesses and government, using a variety of platforms. We delight over 34.5 million customers, providing over 200,000 touch points for our customers and offering over 100 different products under our portfolio.
Listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange and with annual revenues in excess of KES 200 Billion, Safaricom invested KES 38 billion in infrastructure this year, providing over 93% of Kenya’s population with 4G and 3G coverage and providing 2G coverage to 96% of Kenyans. Safaricom has harnessed its proprietary fibre infrastructure to build a dedicated enterprise business, which provides managed I.T. services to clients in the East African region.
Safaricom pioneered commercial mobile money transfer globally through M-PESA, the most successful service of its kind anywhere in the world. Launched in March 2007, M-PESA now has over 23.6 million active customers and over 176,000 M-PESA Agent outlets countrywide.
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About Mowgli Mentoring
Mowgli Mentoring is a specialist mentoring organisation focused on driving inclusive economic and social change in the Middle East, North and Sub-Saharan Africa. Mowgli’s unique, award-winning methodology provides a supportive framework which empowers entrepreneurs, corporate employees, women and youth to unlock their potential and seize new opportunities.
Over the past decade, Mowgli has worked with philanthropists, and local and international governments, and private sector partners to provide mentoring across 17 countries in the Middle East, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa and the UK. Mowgli has trained more than a thousand mentors who have supported entrepreneurs from across all sectors and levels including micro, refugee and SMEs, women, youth and corporate leaders They create and ensure the retention of jobs, producing a significant economic and social return on investment.