Women hold 21pc of senior roles in Kenya’s corporate boardrooms

Kenyan women representation  in listed companies’ board room has  gone up by 75 percent in the last five years according to the 2017 KIM Leadership and Diversity Research report.

The report released on Tuesday shows that the representation now stands at 21 percent up from 12 percent in 2012.

“At current growth rates, gender parity in Kenya’s corporate boardrooms could be achieved by 2030,” states the report.

The report identified that only 4 of the 52 listed companies sampled had female chairpersons, a 7.7 percent representation. This however compares better than the global average of 4 percent.  Further, at least 25 percent female board members had a positive influence on financial performance with a compounded annual growth rate of assets and revenues.

On the skills front, the survey reports that finance and business based professions continue to dominate boardrooms with accountants, auditors, bankers and investment sector professionals occupying 40 percent of the slots. Science, technology and mathematics (STEM) based careers had less than 10 percent representation.

With respect to age, the average age of Kenyan board members stands at 55.8percent with 52.5 percent being between 45 and 49 years old. Here, the country is scoring better than the global average of 60.6 years.

On academic qualifications, 48 percent of board members have a degree while 38 percent have post graduate diplomas. 54 percent of female board members have a post graduate degree compared to 43 percent of male board members. On the flipside, only 1 percent of women have a diploma, compared to 6 percent men.  This means that women have to be more qualified to sit in the board.

Further, the report revealed that women representation in senior management was a quarter meaning the 1 woman for every three men in the senior management teams. In fact 4 organizations of the 44 (sampled in this category) had no single woman in the team meaning that there was no effective women leadership pipeline.

“We note that Kenya is a trailblazer in not only developing markets but even in comparison to advance markets on matters board diversity. This is good news but we believe that more can and needs to be done.  We therefore wish to call upon institutions both listed or not, private and public to join in the movement towards more diverse boards both in conversation and in action”. Said, Mr. Muriithi Ndegwa, Executive Director and CEO of the Kenya Institute of Management.

“At Barclays, we have enacted robust diversity and inclusion policies and programmes to support the successful implementation of this agenda. In 2014, we became the first listed company to attain a perfect gender split, an achievement we have maintained to date. With respect to age, our Board has an average age of 51 years whilst the country management committee has an average age of 46 years. On this front, the board is scoring above the national and global averages of 55.8 years and 60.6 years respectively as captured in the report,” said Charles Muchene, the Chairman of Barclays Bank of Kenya.

The 2017 KIM Leadership and Diversity Research report which was done partnership with the Nairobi Securities Exchange, New Faces New Voices and Barclays Bank of Kenya, sampled 52 of the 62 listed companies in Kenya. This is the most comprehensive report of its kind to date. In addition to gender, the report also captures other parameters of diversity such as age, education, profession and nationality.

The findings, which have been collected over a period of two years, come in the wake of increasing pressure on corporate organisations from regulators and key stakeholders to embrace diversity and inclusion in their boards and leadership teams.

It also revealed that In 2014, the NSE, Barclays and the New Faces, New Voices organized the NSE Leadership Dialogue Series. This was an initiative that sought to lobby the Chairpersons, CEOs and company secretaries of listed companies to embrace diversity and inclusion.

The report indicates that diversity is still a mirage in many countries around the globe but there definitely exists concerted efforts to address this. Despite the outlook of the report, Kenya continues to be a trailblazer in not only developing markets but also in comparison to advance markets in strides made to achieve a good balance.