LEAGUE OF EAST AFRICAN DIRECTORS (LEAD) MAKES A CASE FOR WOMEN ON BOARDS From a historical perspective, many organisations have made deliberate efforts to appoint women on boards and other senior executive positions. However, research shows that we have only scratched the surface and not fully harnessed the potential that women could bring to our boardrooms and therefore contribute to the overall development agenda.
Research, carried out by McKinsey, shows that companies with a greater share of women on their boards of directors and executive committees tend to perform better financially. African companies are no different; the report points to the fact that earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) margin of those with atleast a quarter share of women on their boards was on average 20 percent higher than the industry average.In particular, Uganda’s women director representation is still below that of its regional peers of Kenya and Tanzania of 19.8% and 14.3% respectively and the overall Africa average of 14%. Further, by the time of the survey, with five women directors on its 11 member board (apparently this included the Company Secretary), East African Breweries, based in Kenya had the highest women director representation on the continent of 45.5% – however this has since reduced to 27.2% (20% excluding the Company Secretary) at the moment.
In Uganda, Stanbic Bank, then considered having among the highest women director representation on the continent with 33.3%, has also since reduced to 22.2%.
Indeed, it is with this background that the directors of the League of East African Directors (LEAD) thought it prudent to establish an entity that could be the vehicle through which drive and influence the corporate space especially the emerging realities including gender diversity.
We felt compelled to make our contribution by identifying potential directors, creating a database of such individuals, developing those that needed development, making those resources available to the market, assisting with board trainings and development etc. Our ultimate goal is to see diversity on boards and that East African business are well led and our mission is to equip corporate boards for the advancement of East African Businesses....take a listen!!
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