Vodacom Group has appointed the former chief executive of Airtel Africa, a pan-African rival, to its board, and named a successor to chairman Saki Macozoma nearly a year before he leaves.
Segun Ogunsanya joins as an independent non-executive director on 9 October, according to a notice Vodacom published on the JSE’s stock exchange news service on Wednesday.
Ogunsanya ran Airtel Africa as group CEO from October 2021 until his retirement on 1 July 2024, capping 12 years at the operator, nine of them heading its Nigerian business – Airtel’s largest market and the one Vodacom has never cracked at scale.
Airtel Africa serves about 190 million customers across 14 African countries and competes directly with Vodacom in Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mozambique, while its Airtel Money platform is M-Pesa’s main rival across East Africa.
News of the appointment comes as Vodacom builds its Vision 2030 strategy around financial services, where Ogunsanya’s reputation was made: Airtel Money’s expansion and distribution across the continent.
He is a chartered accountant and an electrical engineering graduate of the University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University. Before telecommunications he ran Coca-Cola bottling operations in Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana, and headed retail banking across 28 African countries at Ecobank.
He chairs the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority, the country’s sovereign wealth fund, and co-chaired the B20 digital transformation task force for last year’s G20 summit in South Africa.
A conflict cleared first
Until recently, Ogunsanya also sat on the board of Optasia, the JSE-listed fintech that runs the airtime lending businesses of both Vodacom and MTN, where he served on the audit committee.
Optasia told shareholders on 31 July that he would resign as an independent non-executive director and step down from the audit committee with effect from 1 September – five weeks before he takes his seat at Vodacom. The company said a search was under way for additional independent directors.
Read: Vodacom scales back dividend policy to fund growth push
Meanwhile, chairman Macozoma will retire from the Vodacom board at the AGM on 20 July 2027, having joined in July 2017. Vodacom applies a self-imposed 10-year tenure limit for directors. Lead independent director Khumo Shuenyane takes over as chairman the following day.
The board credited Macozoma with overseeing the implementation of the Vision 2025 strategy and the start of Vision 2030.
Naspers South Africa CEO Phuthi Mahanyele-Dabengwa leaves the board on 8 October, after seven and three-quarter years – short of the tenure cap. She joined in January 2019 and chaired the remuneration committee while sitting on the nomination committee. Vodacom gave no reason for her departure.
Clive Thomson takes over as chairman of the remuneration committee on 9 October while remaining chairman of the audit, risk and compliance committee.
The company said a fit and proper assessment had been conducted on Ogunsanya in line with the JSE listings requirements, and that there were no “positive statements” to report in respect of the integrity information in his declaration — meaning nothing adverse was disclosed. — © 2026 NewsCentral Media
- Subscribe to TechCentral’s daily newsletter
- Get breaking news alerts on WhatsApp
