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profile Rosemary Mkok – aroun “I told myself that if this is what it was going to take to put three square meals for him on the table then I was going to start life afresh, read and deliver on my new responsibility. Setting up the Secretariat and a legal department was fun,” Dark, pretty, youthful and cheerful is the physical picture that you get when you first meet her. Serious, dedicated and focused is the one you fi nally make after a few minutes of chatting. This is none other than the lady who slightly more than a year ago took over the wheel at the helm of the sugar sector in the country and to some extent the region. And she is keen to drive it further and faster. But as she admits she will need the support of everyone on the road, fellow drivers, passengers, conductors and even bystanders, for she contends there are historical barriers, bumps and potholes on the road to an effective, competitive and fulfi lling sugar industry for all in the country. Ms Rosemary Mkok is the Chief Executive Offi cer of the Kenya Sugar Board (KSB). She has held the position for the last two years. In 2007, Rosemary was appointed the Chief Executive Officer in an acting capacity but was confi rmed substantively one year later in December 2008. The mother of two is not new to the sugar sector though. She joined the Board 15 years ago as a legal offi cer rising through the ranks to the position of Company Secretary from where she was elevated to Acting CEO in 2007. A trained lawyer and Certifi ed Public Secretary (K), Ms. Mkok sits easy in her managerial position, probably more at home than she would at the bar. Since graduating from the Kenya School of Law in 1988, the focused lady has not practiced law as we know it, though she says she may establish a law firm upon retirement from what has become her passion – providing strategic leadership to the sugar industry. Born in Maseno in Western Kenya Rosemary is, as she describes herself, a Kenyan. And true she is. Her parents’ home is in Busia, she was born in Maseno and went through close to ten primary schools in different regions of the country among them Meru, Embu, Machakos, Kisumu, Maseno, Kitale and Turbo. This was necessitated by her father’s frequent change of duty stations being a career civil servant. “This early childhood exposure has given me quite a good feel of Kenya’s rich diverse culture. For that, I can proudly state I am a true Kenyan,” she lightheartedly told Neighbourhood Kenya in an interview at her Sukari Plaza offi ces recently. Rosemary speaks over ten languages and dialects fluently, including all the native languages of the regions she schooled at in Kenya. The first woman Chief Executive Offi cer of Kenya Sugar Board is the sixth born of eleven siblings in the family comprising 3 boys and 8 girls. She is also the only one who went a different route in career terms since majority of the others followed their parents in the field of education. After completing her A levels at Moi Nairobi Girls, Rosemary joined the University of Nairobi to pursue a Bachelor of Laws degree. She then joined the Kenya School of Law where she obtained a post graduate diploma in Legal Studies and qualified for admission to the roll of Advocates of The High Court of Kenya in 1988. But soon after becoming a lawyer, the young lady opted for the corporate world unlike most of her peers who went straight into private practice. At the Sugar Board, Rosemary says she has had a challenging career finding her way in an industry that has very strong diverse interests. By the time she joined the Board, her fi rstborn was only nine months and she had to wriggle through the challenges of a new mother and the demands of setting up and heading a newly formed Legal department. “I told myself that if this is what it was going to take to put three square meals for him on the table, then I was going to start life afresh, read and deliver on my new responsibility. Setting up the Secretariat and a legal department was fun,” remembers the executive whose confessed hobby is reading. The first assignment then was to spearhead the team to come up with a draft Sugar Bill and lobby stakeholders buy-in. This was a success though she notes “the law that was eventually passed did not quite achieve its fullest extent of an industry-driven regulatory framework with 12.
PROFILE the lady turning d the sugar board greater stakeholder empowerment”. So much water has gone under the bridge and one and half a decade later, Rosemary looks back with some sense of achievement at what she has been involved in bringing the industry where it is today. Among the milestones the industry has achieved while she has been at the Board include, the commencement of the privatization program for the state owned sugar enterprises which in her view will not only involve debt management but also increase private sector participation in the industry. Rosemary is upbeat that this will definitely bring with it increased financial discipline; capital injection; new management styles and a stronger commercial orientation. She also recognizes that the granting of an additional 4-year safeguard under the COMESA trade arrangement has given her Board a window within which to restructure the sugar industry and make it regionally and globally competitive. Another achievement she is quick to add is the abandonment in July 2009 of the previous cane payment system based on weight. The industry has now adopted a simplified cane payment formula, which pegs the price of cane to that of sugar and incorporates a quality variable. As a result, farmers have been able to enjoy higher producer prices due to the prevailing ex-factory price of sugar. The Board in its quest to promote relevant research is currently financing the transformation of the industry’s research centre at Kibos, into an ultra modern facility and regional centre of excellence. “We have through market reforms streamlined our surveillance capability to ensure effective monitoring of sugar importation,” she adds. This unlike in the past, has seen a significant stabilization of our domestic market. The soft spoken lady boss also says her Board has managed to increase the funds invested in cane development and consequently expanded the area under the crop from 131,507 ha in 2006 to 169,421 in 2008 though she feels more has to be done if the country is to achieve full efficiency and meet the local demand fully. In the period 2007 to December 2009 the Board disbursed a total of Kshs. 3,564,587,619.50 towards various projects in the industry including cane development, factory rehabilitation, research, roads & infrastructure, farmers payments among others. Rosemary and her team are aggressively pursuing strategic alliances with a number of agencies with a view to translating these interventions into tangible outcomes. Some of these include pooling of resources and efforts towards sugar belt infrastructural development and maintenance, block farming ‘commercial villages’ concept and insurance for cane farmers. But her job has not been without challenges. “I have had to put in double the effort of my all-male predecessors, for my contributions to be recognized, there are challenges but I know I am equal to the task’ she says. One of the major challenges she points out is what she considers some personal attacks by vested interests to weaken her spirit. “I have on a number of occasions been accused falsely or portrayed in extremely negative light but have always been driven by my conscience” She mentions the heavy historical debt burden that has limited access to adequate and affordable credit to the industry resulting in underinvestment, use of obsolete and inefficient processing technology, over-reliance on a single source of revenue and not too satisfactory historical governance standards 13. that are mirrored in the current ineffi ciencies and uncompetitive production cost levels, as some of the major challenges. But all these may soon be behind us, she confi des. The Board under her guidance has put in place strategies to counter the hurdles, including the upscaling of governance standards, policies that deliberately promote effi ciency, competitiveness and diversifi cation of the product base. Infact in her own words the industry is now moving from a sugar industry to a cane industry that will see the farmer benefi t from all products derived from their cane. Back to Rosemary the person, the tea-totler is a dotting but busy mother. Apart from the offi ce work that requires her to be at her desk by seven every morning, she is pursuing an MBA as well as an hour of every day work-out. Rosemary’s main prayer in the country’s betterment is effi cient governance and her role models are Dr Margaret Kobia of the Kenya Institute of Administration and Professor Arthur Eshiwani of KCA University. It is her dream that one day she will pride herself of transforming the face and image of the sugar industry into an effi cient, competitive, multi-product industry just like Dr. Kobia has done to KIA with the integrity standards that both Proffesor Eshiwani and Dr. Kobia uphold. Before joining the Sugar Board Ms Mkok worked as General Manager at Damca Express Services and the Lake Basin Development Authority where she was a Legal Offi cer and later elevated to Authority Secretary.
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