24 November 2007: This evening, the results of the 8th edition of East Africa’s Most Respected Companies Survey were released at a gala dinner attended by a cross-section of business leaders from across East Africa. This year, we have a new overall winner across all industry groups, Safaricom.
Safaricom is only the third winner of this prestigious award, with the previous holders having been East African Breweries and Kenya Airways. Safaricom also emerged as the most respected company in Kenya.
This year, we introduced a one-off award to recognise the non-commercial public entity that demonstrates best practice in service delivery and style of management in each of the three countries. In Kenya, this award went to Kenya Revenue Authority. We had set aside another one-off award for the emerging business today that CEOs saw as becoming significant national players in five years’ time. However, many CEOs were not able to pin-point specific small businesses today which might become significant players in the future because of the rapid rate of change and the high rate of attrition that emerging businesses suffer. But they did say that they expected these to come primarily from the Information and Communication Technology as well as the Financial services sectors. Accordingly, no individual business in this category was recognised.
I would like to thank the 353 CEOs who participated in the survey, as well as the wider business community for the interest they continue to show in the survey. And I would also like to congratulate the winners, East Africa’s most respected. Respect is a value that cannot be bought or demanded, it has to be earned. Once earned, it has to be guarded jealously as it is very fragile. And the highest accolade that a business can get is to truly earn the respect of business leaders. The feedback from the survey is that this respect comes from well thought-out strategies, well implemented, dynamic leadership and management style, quality of products or services and a sound financial footing.
Charles Muchene
Director of the Survey and Country Leader, Kenya
