At a gala dinner hosted by incoming Zambia Sugar CEO, Oswald Magwenzi along with many Zambian captains of industry bade farewell to Rebecca Katowa in style at Lusaka’s glitzy Neelkanth Sarovar Premiere Hotel on 23th October 2021.
Rebecca is the first female country director of Zambia Sugar a subsidiary of Illovo Sugar Africa. Rebecca has been Managing Director (MD) of Zambia Sugar since 2015. She joined the company in 1997 as Marketing Services Manager. Her career has been spent in the manufacturing and FMCG sector working in either sales or marketing roles. She has been with the company for 24 years.
Mrs Katowa recently retired from Zambia sugar on the 31st of August, 2021 and has handled over the mantle to Mr Oswald Magwenzi whom she advised to make family a priority and make a balance between work life and family life. As well as to put teamwork before individual work.
Mr Oswald Magwenzi is a Zimbabwean National and was appointed to the board on the 1st September, 2021. He is former Managing Director of Ubombo Sugar, an Eswatini subsidiary of the Illovo Sugar Africa Group and he Spearheaded an industry wide effort to improve water use efficiency in Eswatini. He has had an exemplary career in the sugar, irrigation and international finance sector.
Rebecca Katowa had to work “twice as hard” as a female in male dominated industry as said by Mizinga Melu in her speech as an observation. She did such an exemplary job at it that she left such big shoes to fill. She did such a phenomenal job in her roles at Zambia Sugar plc, the company got awarded such commendable awards such as the great country performance as well as the Safety award. She created a culture of safety around the work environment under the slogan “Safety, my responsible, our way of life”. Zambia Sugar won the Safety award, safety improved and there were no lost time injuries.
Other than safety the other thing that had improved was the Revenue, which has grown by 206%, Operating Profit by 490% and Domestic sales by 150% as well as promoting strong relationships with stakeholders. Rebecca Katowa has so much passion and innovation for her job as a result she motivated the teams to develop a 10kg bag packer in response to demand for 10kg bags. The team named the packer after her, “ RK 1”, an acronym for Rebecca Katowa One.
The business has faced many milestones in the last ten years but now it has been positioned for sustainable growth and resilience. As well as the two major expansions one of which is the 2007 to 2009 exportation to Europe and the other being the 2015 refinery which was done on time and within budget, which has put the business in a great position.
Although, Rebecca is retiring it is indeed a bitter-sweet moment as she had become part of a Family at Zambia Sugar which she will dearly miss. She created friendships within and outside Zambia sugar. Rebecca Katowa inspires so many people because she had to work extremely hard for these achievement as well as look after a family which is extremely commendable. She is a huge inspiration to her co-workers and females all over because she truly left her footprint in the sand by such hard work, resilience and loyalty. Rebecca is big on Loyalty which she urges the younger generation to have more of. She got through her long days and deadlines at work with humor, her supporting family and friends and most importantly God.
She will miss the strong leadership and governance at Zambia Sugar and during her time as CEO she never found herself having to compromise her conscience due to the strong governance and policies of the company and just working for a business that doesn’t let you compromise your conscience is a treasure.