Patricia Katshabala is the dynamic Executive Head of External Affairs of Vodacom DRC – the custodian of the company’s reputation. Her role requires her to be the company’s communication channel, speaking about every action and innovation that is happening in the company – from the foundation to the commercial department and technical innovations and more. Over the years, Patricia has significantly contributed to Vodacom’s growth story in Congo, thus establishing herself as a force to be reckoned with in Africa’s telecom industry. One of the reasons for her spectacular rise to the top is her ability to rise after every failure. If one had to describe Patricia in a word, it would be resilient.
“Resilience has led me to the position where I am today,” she says. “I never lose hope. I continue to engage, learn, and remain committed.” She also believes in being adaptable, innovative, and reinventing herself. According to her, it is important to reinvent if one wants to create the next big thing that customers will need and demand.
In her new role as Executive Head of External Affairs, Patricia has pursued advanced qualifications and successfully completed an executive MBA in strategic management at the University of Frankfurt, as well as earning a policy and regulation certificate with the GSMA.
Patricia believes in sharing her knowledge, and she is set to mentor the next generation and make them ready for the future. “I’m one person in a hundred million, one Congolese out of a hundred million, but I intend to leave my footprints as I move forward,” she says.
What Is Success?
Patricia believes that everyone has a purpose in life. So, for her, success means accomplishment of purpose. She explains that when someone is fulfilling their own purpose, they are working toward success. Additionally, she views the accomplishment of goals as a form of success. “On a lighter note,” Patricia says, “success is also about happiness and fulfillment.”
She also points out that many would define success in terms of wealth or status, but for her, it is more about personal growth and making a positive impact. “It’s about having a meaningful influence on the lives of others, which easily blends with the concept of purpose,” she adds. When you have a purpose, you know how you can have a positive, lasting impact on people’s lives and their way of doing things.” Recently, Patricia has been humbled to serve as a mentor through the UBUNTU network, helping to consolidate and nurture female leadership qualities in young women determined to break through the glass ceiling. This experience, she says, has been profoundly rewarding, enabling her to give back and inspire the next generation of women leaders.
Ultimately, for Patricia, success is a personal journey, and it is defined by what brings her satisfaction and joy.
Stepping Into the Telecom Industry
Patricia has spent a significant part of her life outside Congo – having done her schooling abroad. Her journey with the telecom industry began once she came back to her country. She shares that she decided to settle in Congo with the aim of making an impact on the country.
Patricia’s career in the telecom space started when she joined Vodacom Congo as brand manager. It has been both a challenging and rewarding journey, according to her. One of the rewarding moments was launching the company’s premium segment, called Privilege, a blend of both telco and non-telco advantages that were to be extended to the 4% base of high-value customers. Patricia introduced this segment when Vodacom was just starting segmentation in DRC, eight years ago.
After a fruitful stint as a premium brand manager, Patricia moved from one segment to another in Vodacom – Mass, financial services & financial innovations, which is called M-PESA, a Pan-African platform launched by Vodafone’s subsidiary “Safaricom Kenya”.
Patricia transitioned to the telecom industry from the FMCG sector. The new industry was a different universe, with completely new jargon and terminologies. To thrive here, she had to understand and master different notions of customers, RPU, OPEX: Operational Expenditure, CAPEX: Capital Expenditure, POS: Point of Sale, market share, and sales. Therefore, the first major challenge she faced after joining Vodacom was adaptability. She points out that she also had to adapt to measure.
“I was entering a market where success was measured by rigorous surveys that were strictly conducted at certain periods,” Patricia explains. “That’s what I mean by adaptability. Even the company’s culture required adaptability.”
In the FMCG industry, she was required to be sell-oriented, and there was not much focus on team cohesion. “The focus was more on achieving targets,” Patricia says. At Vodacom, she immediately noted the company’s strong company culture, which stressed not just delivery, but also how one delivers. “The ‘How’ was very important when I joined Vodacom,” Patricia says.
A Woman in the Telecom Industry
It has always been a challenge to be a woman in lead, Patricia points out. Initially, at Vodacom, she led a team comprising of men, and she had to prove herself regularly that she was capable of leading them. Fortunately, Vodacom, which is majority-owned by Vodafone, encourages women to take up leadership positions, which enabled her to pull through.
As a woman, Patricia also found it challenging to strike the right balance between her professional and personal life. She had her three children after joining Vodacom. As a wife, mother, and leader, she encountered the challenge of how to pursue a career while striking the right balance with family life. “So. it was about how do you make a brilliant career when you have to take maternity leave,” Patricia says. Thanks to Vodacom’s open communication, she received a lot of support. Also, the company’s initiatives, such as a four-month maternity/paternity leave, helped her.
Patricia had to adjust her leadership style because of the challenges. She points out that women leaders have to keep proving themselves and double is expected from them. She explains that a woman leader has to do double what is expected from male colleagues because of the gender barriers that are often unspoken. She thinks this is also part of what led her to where she is today.
“I worked very hard and remained committed, despite being a mother and having to find the right balance,” Patricia says. “I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve worked to try and bridge the gap, catching up after being out of the office for four months, only to return as the leader. Fortunately, the digital orientation of both the industry and our company have enabled me to save time and work more efficiently—by automating a number of processes, I’ve been able to free up precious hours and direct my focus toward tasks that truly require my attention.”
Tremendous Growth of Vodacom
Patricia joined Vodacom in 2013, and since then, the company has grown at a tremendous rate. “We’ve made a leap of progress,” she points out, adding that many things have improved. She recalls that when she joined the company, it was doing segmentation and beginning to focus on the customer. “There has been a great evolution in how we perceive the client and how we use customer insights to design products and services, respond to the needs, and orient our social actions through our social contracts within Vodacom,” she says.
Patricia points out that Vodacom is one of the few mobile network operators (MNOs) that maintains a foundation. She adds that she has seen how the whole company has joined hands to make the foundation shine. This is a significant advantage that one would not find in many other MNOs.
“In a nutshell, the company has evolved greatly in its way of perceiving and handling customers,” Patricia says. And customer centrism has grown exponentially, translating into great results for the company. “It has worked very well,” she informs. “Today, the company is the market leader in terms of subscribers – with 24 million subscribers.”
Over the last eleven years, Patricia has also seen innovation becoming the affair of the whole company. Previously, it was a preserve of the commercial business units. As for the company’s culture, Patricia says that it has become more fostering than before. “We’ve seen great team spirit growing throughout the company,” she adds.
Contributions to the Company’s Growth Story
Patricia steered the rebranding of Vodacom from blue to red after Vodafone became its majority shareholder. She explains, “I had to consolidate customer market share, drive trust, and emphasize the brand power I was presenting to the customer. It was crazy work because we had to paint everything from blue to red.” In addition to that, she and her team had to develop a strategy that prioritized a customer-centric approach and align it with market trends, not just local ones, but also Vodafone’s global market trends. This included adopting data-driven decision-making processes.
The Commercial launch of Vodacom’s 3G and 4G is also one of the major achievements of Patricia. It led to a total turnaround for not only the company but also the industry. Patricia points out that its successful launch required meticulous planning and cross-functional collaboration with very agile teams. It also demanded a deep understanding of customer needs to avoid features they might not be interested in. Theses launches increased Vodacom’s market share; it also gained significant customer loyalty.
Building Internal and External Reputation
When Patricia stepped into the role of head of external affairs, she was expected to build on two things –engagement internally and reputation externally.
For internal engagement, she launched a campaign called “We Belong.” Patricia says that when she saw their reputation scores, she realized that there was a need to strengthen cohesion within the team. The “We Belong” campaign was launched to achieve that. Patricia explains that the campaign is driving the point that “we are one Vodacom, one team, and that, we belong here.”
Vodacom’s employees spend more time with their co-workers than families – which results in co-workers becoming like families. “I felt responsible for fostering this bond,” Patricia says. She informs that it is one of the signatures that is now adopted by everyone – from the top to the lowest employee.
Unlike internal reputation, building a reputation outside the company was a daunting task, Patricia says. Vodacom needed to shift its narrative, strengthen its relationship with the public and change the existing narrative. “I had very little time to do all that,” she says. With support from the company’s C-suite executives as well as the staff, she was able to communicate the narrative they wanted the company to be known for. “The results spoke for themselves: we achieved a reputation score of 84.4, a result never before seen by any Vodafone operation,” Patricia points out.
Vodacom aims to be known as a purpose-led company that has a mandate to connect beyond profit. “We want to be known as the company that connects people, government, machines, and more,” Patricia says.
Plans for the Future
Patricia hopes that by the time she leaves the company, she will have left a legacy, impacting the future generation of leaders – those who have come under her leadership, whom she looks forward to seeing grow. “I hope that they will be able to prioritize a couple of things, including integrity, hard work, readiness, innovation, and customer centering,” she says.
Patricia often tells her team to prepare themselves today so that when they meet opportunities tomorrow, they are ready. She encourages them to get as much training as they can and take up as many challenges as they can because they are the only thing that will get them ready when that opportunity is going to strike. She hopes to see this apply to the industry as a whole, as her work has allowed her to have an impact beyond just her team.
Patricia also hopes to leave a legacy of resilience and forward-thinking, which continuously adapts to market change – so the company can exceed the customer experience. This is what she envisions living beyond her time at Vodacom.
Moreover, Patricia wants to see the company continue to lead the market and bridge the digital divide. Today, despite the country’s population exceeding 100 million, all telecom operators combined cover only 55% of the population—leaving nearly half still unconnected. “I look forward to seeing the company thrive and extend its coverage beyond to connect Congo like never before,” Patricia says, “so that even those who are left behind can get connected and enjoy the tremendous wealth that the internet can provide.” There remains much work ahead to ensure everyone has a chance to be part of this digital future.
She points out that she is helming the position of Executive Head of External Affairs at a time when the company is looking forward to sustainable growth and is making all possible changes so that it can achieve that. “Vodacom intends to continue to lead but also be mindful of the environment, social aspect, all those aspects that will bring fulfillment to the lives of people,” Patricia says.
Message to Aspiring Leaders
“Work hard, be purpose-driven, and have integrity” is Patricia’s advice to aspiring leaders. She also points out that there are no free lunches, especially for women leaders.
“Nothing is handed to us on a silver platter,” she says. “We need to build a generation of women who see no barriers and a generation of African leaders who see no barriers to their growth.” Patricia encourages aspiring leaders to keep reading – she is herself a voracious reader – and learning. “Never stop at all, because the minute you stop that’s when you become obsolete and out of date,” she adds.
Still A Lot to Give!
Patricia, despite a long list of accomplishments, believes her greatest achievement is still ahead of her. For her, even the sky is not the limit. “I believe that horizons can stretch as far as my hopes and dreams can go,” she says. “I look forward to more in my career and life.”
“I’ve not yet reached my full potential. I still have a lot to give, and I’m ready for it,” she adds.
