The Executive Communities East African calendar kicked-off with two back-to-back events in Nairobi – the CFO Leadership Summit and the CITO Future-Ready Summit.
Executive Communities’ events and engagements calendar is chock-full again in 2026, and East Africa’s first two summits drew crowds of business leaders in Nairobi.
CFO Summit tackles humble leadership
Novel insights on leadership, presented with honesty and humility, were the defining characteristic of CFO East Africa summit at Villa Rosa Kempinski in Nairobi on 13 March. Because of the trust-inspiring, intimate nature of the event, CFOs felt safe to allow their right-brained sides to emerge as they discussed prickly problems in finance leadership.
MTN Rwanda’s CFO Dunstan Stober identified four pillars that he says define good leadership under pressure: self-awareness and emotional control, the courage to tell the truth, teaching in difficult moments, and making the hard decisions that build individuals and teams.
One CFO spoke up about the “problem-solving” trap and advised leaders to grow staff by asking them to come up with possible solutions to problems too.
“Hire people who are even brighter than you. They make you look even better,” another CFO concurred, and cautioned against CFOs confining themselves to numbers only, arguing that CFOs “should be part of the journey that delivers those numbers”.
The partner address was delivered by Stanbic acting CEO Abraham Ongenge, who drew on his own experience of international assignments to illustrate what it means to lead with humility in new contexts.
The evening’s keynote was delivered by Martin Oduor Otieno, CEO of The Leadership Group and author of The Humanized Leader, who also made the case for a fundamental shift in what the CFO role demands. He observed that the command-and-control leadership style of previous generations is incompatible with today’s workforce. “If the CFO is known as the person who is going to say no, even before lifting their head, then we are not picking up that courage of leadership,” he said.
A parting shot from one CFO summed up the tenor of the evening: “Vulnerability is not weakness. It is actually being human.”
CITO Summit aligns technology with human needs
CITOs had the pleasure of listening to the keynote speech of Vinod Sharma, M-Pesa Africa CTO, who also emphasised the value of people over technology platforms or even AI. He cautioned against being intimidated by jargon – think terms such as agentic AI, gen AI, and so on – that can overpromise and underdeliver unless used in a targeted, intelligent way.
For fintech leaders deciding how to integrate AI, Vinod’s advice was to begin with the customer rather than the technology. He advised that AI should reinforce why a consumer chooses a product.
The CITOs moved on to discuss tech and fintech applications in healthcare, banking and even in helping process bursary applications in higher education – and in each instance, there were limits to the AI’s ability to deliver flawless results. Public institutions may be hamstrung by the quality and structure of their data, healthcare applications by inaccurate readings or transcriptions, and banks by the fact that they operate withing a regulated environment, where AI may not respect the safeguards or controls needed in that context.
In the ensuing breakout sessions, participants reiterated, across their varied sectors, whether it be in the hospitality industry, at petrol stations, in retail environments, the importance of aligning technology with human needs, and remaining aware of its limitations.
These two immensely successful summits are far from the only meetings offered this year; in fact, the East Africa events diary is brimming with events. Next up are the CFO and CITO East Africa Rwanda Summits on 16 April in Kigali, followed by the CITO East Africa Uganda Summit in Kampala on 12 May, and the CFOs’ Summit on 14 May. Tanzania hosts in June, with the CITO East Africa Tanzania Summit on 9 June, and the event for CFOs on 11 June, both in Dar es Salaam. More events are planned in Nairobi in July, Rwanda in August, Tanzania in September, Uganda in October, as well as the CFO Awards East Africa event and the CITO East Africa Year End Summit in November in Kenya.
If you are a CITO or CFO and would like to attend any of these upcoming events, reach out to KC Rottok Chesaina, Executive Communities East Africa director, at [email protected].