From the tone of the staff announcement, you could almost visualise the quivering voices of the two authors as they announced the exit of East African Breweries Limited’s Group chief financial officer, Risper Ohaga.
“It is with mixed feelings that we announce the resignation of Ms Risper Ohaga as the chief financial officer and executive director of EABL,” read the announcement.
“Risper leaves EABL to pursue other interests outside the Group, in line with her career aspirations,” they added.
Ms Ohaga is leaving amid an impending major shareholding shake-up at the Ruaraka-based alcohol manufacturer, as EABL’s parent company, Diageo, sells its 65 percent stake to Japan’s Asahi Group, which will take control of the brewer.
But for Ms Karuku and Ms Wanyama, this appears to be a painful break-up of the close bond that may have developed among the three top female executives.
Ms Ohaga will remain in office until June 30 to allow for an orderly transition, with her successor to be announced later.
“She has led in delivering the 2021 and 2025 medium-term notes, saving the business significant amounts in interest costs, demonstrating her financial acuity and bold decision-making,” the company said in a statement.
The statement added that Ms Ohaga also placed strong emphasis on talent development, with members of the EABL finance team winning Diageo global finance awards a record three times in the past four years.
At EABL, she is credited with optimising the company’s balance sheet and securing funding to fully support its strategy while tightly managing costs. She led the issuance of the brewer’s 2021 and 2025 medium-term notes, transactions that the company says delivered significant savings in interest costs and strengthened its funding profile.
Under her leadership, EABL said, the company reinforced its financial controls and governance structures, enhanced investor relations, and delivered strong results in a challenging operating environment.
“A number of Finance staff have taken up international assignments both globally and within EABL, with secondments to senior roles in Japan, Ghana, India, Ireland, and Singapore, among others. She believes in nurturing and developing talent, as evidenced by the number of finance staff promoted and/or taking on new challenges under her leadership.”
In February 2020, Ms Ohaga replaced Gyorgy Geiszl, ushering in a trend in which locals gradually replaced expatriates in the corner offices of EABL.
But something else was also happening. Women, too, were replacing men in the listed firm’s C-suite, with Ms Karuku taking over from Andrew Cowan as Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer a year later.
Ms Ohaga, the second-born in a family of seven, seems to have taken after her mother. She said in a previous interview that she was always a dreamer, so she is not surprised by the extent to which she has scaled the corporate ladder.
Her mother, too, was a dreamer. She left the three of them—her and her two sisters—with their father to pursue higher education in Canada.
“I am really good at what I do,” she said as a matter of fact in a past interview.
She grew up as a problematic, curious, and adventurous girl who was good at Maths. But even then, she was not really sure what she should pursue in college.
The turning point in her search for a career, she said in the interview, came when she said she wanted to do Accounting and her dad advised her to drop it, saying it was too tough even for him. She went for it.
From banking to brewery
Ms Ohaga joined EABL from Absa Group, then known as Barclays, where she had worked for more than a decade in senior finance and audit roles across Africa.
Her appointment coincided with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, a period that placed unprecedented strain on corporate balance sheets and funding.
Before joining EABL, Ms Ohaga served as Chief Financial Officer for Absa’s Zambian unit between November 2015 and February 2020. She previously held the role of Managing Director for Barclays Internal Audit, Africa Retail and Business Banking, where she was accountable for audit delivery across 13 African countries.
Earlier, she was Director, Africa, at Barclays Internal Audit, overseeing retail and business banking audits in 12 countries, including Kenya, South Africa, Uganda, Tanzania, Ghana, and Egypt. Her career at Barclays began as Regional Director for Internal Audit for East and West Africa.
Yet behind the veneer of corporate finance is a loving wife and dedicated mother who once declared in an interview that she is ready to fight for her children.
She did not always want to have children or to be married. All this happened in a flash.
She said in a past interview that her ideas about marriage and parenting changed when she met her current husband, whom she described as sporty, calm, and shy. Practical Peter, she calls him.
She recalled getting pregnant with her firstborn in her first year at KPMG, an audit firm, when she was only 24 years old.
In an interview, she recalled an inscription on the company’s medical policy which postulated: “Pregnancy is self-inflicted; therefore, it shall not be covered.”
It is not known where Ms Ohaga will go next, but in a past interview, she said that at the end of her corporate season, she would do a lot of work with women and children. She is interested in helping build corporate leaders.
