Kenya Power has shaken up its boardroom to meet the constitutional requirement for women directorship quotas. The power firm has appointed PR consultant, Fatuma Hirsi Mohamed and Jane Nashida as directors, pushing the share of women directors to a third in the nine-member board. Kenya Power, which is owned 50.08 per cent by the government, dropped Fidesius Nyaga and Macharia Kariuki as directors. The firm has started the search for a new CEO following the appointment of Joseph Njoroge as principal secretary in the Energy ministry. Kenya Power has been in breach since it had only one female director, Dr Theodorak Mallah-Kilukumi. Other State-owned firms aligned to the Energy ministry including Kenya Electricity Transmission Company (Ketraco), KenGen and Geothermal Development Company (GDC) are among the few with boards that meet gender diversity limit. The number of women in boardrooms of State-owned companies stands at less than 15 per cent, according to the Institute of Directors (Kenya), reflecting the influence that old-boy networks have had on directors appointments. The Kenya Power board shake-up comes at a time that women’s role in the boardrooms of Nairobi bourse-listed firms remains muted. A study by Kenya Institute of Management (KIM) shows that 34 per cent of the 57 companies it examined at the Nairobi bourse do not have a woman on their boards at a time that the capital markets regulator is pushing for mandatory gender caps. KIM blames the reliance on old-boy networks for directorship appointments since boards have traditionally been made up of retired men of similar backgrounds who recruit from a network of friends. The under-representation of women at the top level of big business has also been caused by the requirement that one has either previous boardroom or executive experience, especially that of CEO and chief financial officer. At present, only two women — Maria Msiska (BOC Kenya) and Nasim Devji (DTB Bank) — are chief executive officers in publicly quoted companies. Lack of women in directorships is said to be preventing the flow of fresh ideas into boardrooms where the ticket to a seat is often influenced by factors other than merit. But over the past the year, firms listed at the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) have made strides in appointing women chairperson—pushing their number to five from one. The new chairpersons include Susan Mboya-Kidero (Liberty Insurance), Khadija Mire (Uchumi Supermarket), Anne Mutahi (StanChart) and Isabella Ochola-Wilson.
Posted on: Mon, 01 Jul 2013 07:20:18 +0000
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