In a move to drive its mobile money and enterprise divisions, Airtel Kenya, has appointed Royal Phillips, Central and West Africa GM Abdallah Khamis as its Commercial Director.
Abdallah will oversee customer service, Airtel money and enterprise divisions to spearhead Airtel’s aggressive business growth strategy in the country.
Airtel Money lags behind its competitor M-PESA terms of transactional volumes and users. This appointment is expected to help the firm grow its users and transactions too as well as up its customer service to improve service delivery.
Abdallah was Royal Philips general manager and organization leader for 2 years and was in charge of lighting, healthcare and consumer lifestyle.
Before joining Royal Philips, Abdallah had an illustrious career at Coca Cola spanning 12 years and held various leadership positions in East, Horn and West Africa countries, including Nigeria as franchise manager for three and a half years. He started his career as a medical representative in Cadilla Pharmaceutical and GlaxoSmithKline.
Mr. Khamis, a Kenyan national, holds an MBA from the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts, USA and another from the University of Nairobi specializing in Strategy and Marketing. He also has a post Graduate Diploma in Marketing from the Chartered Institute of Marketing – UK and a Bachelor of Education in Science from Egerton University.
Airtel Kenya chief executive officer Adil El Youssefi said Abdallah will be an asset to the management team towards its growth strategy in the country.
“His extensive knowledge of commerce, understanding of consumer and brand dynamics across multiple markets in Africa will prove invaluable to the company. We welcome Mr. Khamis to Airtel and look forward to working with him in delivering our promises to customers,” said Adil El Youssefi.