Christian De Faria, MD&CEO - Airtel Africa, a French National, with over 30 years of rich industry experience across multiple geographies, diverse sectors and organizations; such as MTN, Telekom Malaysia, Disc Vision, Deutsche Telecom and Grundig; was recently appointed Executive Chairman - Airtel Africa, effective 1st April, 2016. As Executive Chairman, Christian will be responsible directly for all matters relating to Legal, Regulatory, Government Relations, Corporate Communications, CSR, Shareholders as well as M&A. In his new role, while giving up the day-to-day P&L responsibility, he will continue to support the vision of Airtel Africa.
Mr. De Faria joined Airtel Africa in September, 2013 as CEO- Africa Operations. Key focus was to increase the Revenue Market Share, enhance network and IT capabilities; ramp up 3G data and Airtel Money as future growth engines, strengthen customer experience by institutionalizing best-in-class processes to build execution excellence and strengthen the Brand ‘Airtel’ in Africa.
Before joining Airtel, Christian was, for the last 7 years, associated with MTN where he held senior leadership positions including: Executive Vice President, responsible for the operations for West and Central Africa Region, and later as the Senior Vice President - Commercial and Innovation, responsible for transformation of the Group Supply Chain function. In his most recent position, he was the Group Commercial Officer at MTN for 2 years until Jan 2013.
Christian is a Chartered Accountant, and holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Finance and Administration from the University of Toulouse, in France.