The techie with an eye and touch of an artist

Ms Mwende Gatabaki, Special Adviser to the First vice-president of African Development Bank. She is the most senior Kenyan at the bank. Photo/DENNISH OCHIENG'

By Kingwa Kamencu

IN SUMMARY
Within five years, her efforts at KTDA saw it become the first African organisation and the only one to date, to be recognised as a ‘CIO Global 100’ company by ICT Leadership Magazine in the USA. This is an annual listing of companies using ICT in the most innovative way.
After six years at KTDA, Mwende felt that she needed a new challenge. This time she was interested to explore how to leverage ICT to help the continent move forward and also do something with a slant away from technology on its own.

Despite entering a very male-dominated world (her undergraduate class of 30 had only three female students), Mwende attributes the seeming ease with which she has found her place in it to her father.


She is not your stereotyped geek, there is something of the creative in her. Indeed, at first sight, you would be hard-pressed to point to the ICT and banking industry which she currently straddles, as her professional fields.

The smart beige suit, gold satin blouse and low pumps while paying the necessary homage to tradition, are impishly smirked at by the short trim hairdo, array of large looped earrings, and the big chunky gold earring that sits at the top of her left earlobe.

Mwende Gatabaki looks more like a manager at an arts gallery or an advertising firm’s creative director than a business leader at the African Development Bank.

It was in transforming operations at the Kenya Tea Development Authority (KTDA) that Mwende’s innovative flair shone through. She joined the organisation in 2004, leaving six years later having streamlined ICT operations with a restructuring procedure that was eventually taken up by the organisation’s central system and used in other departments.

Within five years, her efforts at KTDA saw it become the first African organisation and the only one to date, to be recognised as a ‘CIO Global 100’ company by ICT Leadership Magazine in the USA. This is an annual listing of companies using ICT in the most innovative way. Mwende’s own ability was recognised while at the tea firm as well, being awarded the ‘Top Public Sector CIO in Africa’ at the Africa ICT Achievers in South Africa, within just three years of being with the group.

Some of the challenges Mwende faced at KTDA included having to retrench a large number of unskilled political appointees and relatives of managers, previously a common bane of parastatal management. Her novel plan outlining what she would do with the board before taking up the job had however seen them give their approval beforehand.

She has some advice on initiating drastic change. “If you want to make fundamental changes, you have to do it within the first six months. During the interview, I had told the board that these were the changes I wanted to make and they had to support me on them.”

The results at KTDA were more than theoretical; they concretely improved farmers’ lives. “Farmers’ registration used to take six months, in which period they would not get paid. After we set up the system in place, registration took three days.”

Automation also improved procurement, and farmers payments which were previously randomly and haphazardly made, now had a fixed date for which money would get into their accounts.

Changes Mwende oversaw her department implement through mobile technologies also saw theft of tea which had been a regular occurrence at buying centres and factories, come to an end.

“With the tea being monitored from different ends, farmers saw a sharp increase in their returns, yet there had been no increase in the tea they delivered.”

Mwende’s clarity and grasp of how to use ICT to provide concrete solutions grew with her time in the field. Working at USAid on the technical side of things for five years, and nine years with the UN amidst other engagements, grounded her learning and enabled her to pick up additional insights along the way.

She had earlier set up a one-stop IT desk at Unicef, which when noticed by a World Food Programme boss prompted a job offer at the latter organisation as Telecoms IT officer in Rome.

After six years at KTDA, Mwende felt that she needed a new challenge. This time she was interested to explore how to leverage ICT to help the continent move forward and also do something with a slant away from technology on its own.

Joining the African Development Bank in 2010 as division chief, client technology, her ability to integrate ICT into the bank’s system so as to serve their customers better, again saw her get moved to the president’s office as corporate adviser.