The Chief Executive of Vodafone Ghana, Yolanda Cuba, has emerged as the Industry Personality of the Year at the just ended Ghana information Technology and Telecom Awards (GITTA).
Despite taking over the reins at the company in a little over a year, Yolanda has already exhibited a will to win and has put in place a comprehensive strategy to transform the telecommunication giant. Yolanda has already captured the entire country with her passion to pursue an agenda to ignite Ghana’s digital revolution.
Her love for CSR and community engagement, for instance, has led to the launch of Instant schools – a digital educational platform that is currently giving free extra classes for students across several academic cycles in Ghana. It builds into an ethos by Vodafone to ensure all children of school-going age can have access to free education on the go without having to pay for it. With less than eight months into the launch of the initiative, a total of 1.8million users have been recorded. Yolanda has also been instrumental in the launch of Vodafone SuperCare – a dedicated customer service line for the speech and hearing impaired in society.
Additionally, she led the company to embark on an extensive strategic cost programme, which yielded impressive results in the area of operational costs. These efficiencies are also responsible for a significant improvement in Vodafone’s earnings before Interest Taxes Depreciation and Amortisation (EBITDA) as the company looks to return to profitable levels in the near future.
Vodafone also won three other awards on the day; Digital Transformation, best Wholesale Company and Telecom brand of the year.
Commenting after receiving the recognition, Yolanda said: “I am proud of each of the awards but I, particularly, want to single out the digital transformation award. We committed a few months ago to drive digital inclusion in Ghana and began our transformation journey. It is exciting to start reaping the fruits of our commitment and actions. We do not have the biggest budget but we have the biggest will to win and that is most satisfying.”
The GITTA awards night is Ghana’s first and only platform for recognizing excellence in the ICT industry. The awards represent the most respected accolade in the industry, celebrating excellence in innovation, product development and service delivery.