Legal Team Size: 6

What are the most significant cases and transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

The legal team has been involved in the largest M&A transactions affecting the towerco sector within the East Africa region in particular they played a critical role in our company’s purchase and acquisition of approx. 700 towers from Telkom Kenya and a further 1200 tower sites from Eaton Towers.  The team was involved in drafting complex tower leaseback agreements, seeking regulatory approval and ensuring that the sites meet the legal closing conditions. The legal team is also particularly involved in the day to day administration of various contractual arrangements with our customers, providing legal advisory support and assistance for enforcement of legal contracts.

Which recent political, economic or regulatory changes have impacted your work the most in recent years?

Rapid change in policy particularly tax policy annually brings with it benefits as well as some challenges, we’ve seen some great movement on renewable energy introduced in the past few years but also seen the policy shift towards broadening and deepening of the tax base in the last two years.  This means that the cost of doing business has soared  with much of this change owed to direct regulatory intervention.  This has kept us quite busy as we also make policy submissions regularly in an attempt to shape regulation before implementation.

Are there any causes, business or otherwise, that you are passionate about? 

Yes, I’m involved in our company’s social impact initiative which we refer to as digital communities for which I head the steering committee in Kenya.  Through this initiative we seek to empower the lives of more than 20,000 individuals (mostly youth) by providing and rehabilitating digital labs in schools and communities at large, providing laptops and other digital devices that could be used to access educational material and information on the internet. I also enjoy sports like swimming, running, and weightlifting.