Reinette van der Merwe has been in the banking industry for more than two decades, and risen to be one of Botswana’s most formidable professionals, but says she still sees glaring gender imbalance in the boardroom – most times, she is the only one woman present.
Van de Merwe, Managing Director of Barclays Bank of Botswana, is aware giant strides need to be made to include more women in corporate Africa.
“I have never really seen gender until a couple of years ago when it was pointed out to me that I am the only woman in the boardroom,” laughs the 47-year-old.
While she never felt discriminated against at any point in her career, her exposure and interactions with other women have highlighted to her that their experiences are not all the same.
While 40% of today’s global workforce is female, only 5% of women hold global chief executive positions in Africa.
This is a far cry from the desired target of 50% to achieve gender equality, according to a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers.
In South Africa, there is only one female chief executive in the Top 40 JSE-listed companies and that’s Maria Ramos of Barclays Africa.
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Van de Merwe worked her way up the ranks and was appointed Managing Director in 2013 after serving as Chief Internal Audit Executive. She is also an avid equestrian.
“I never thought I’d end up where I am now, but from the time I was a child, I wanted to become a chartered accountant and then one day become the chief financial officer of a company.”
Despite being at the helm of a bank in an industry characterized by an onslaught of fines, slowed market performance and litigation since the financial crisis, Van der Merwe, says: “I really love running a bank and although I develop women and men equally, I see competence, not gender.”
That has been the driving force of Van der Merwe’s leadership.
“For me, talent development and management in a bank [is fundamental]. A bank is made up of the people and we’re a service-orientated organization, so people are your most important assets,” she says.
“So for me the most rewarding element of my job is when I see someone really excelling at what they are doing and being able to promote them.”
Van de Merwe elaborates:  “&#8230; when I moved to Botswana, I had a really strong head of IT and in terms of her development, she put up her hand and showed her capability, she’s now my chief operating officer.”
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Leading a people-centered organization is central to another one of Barclays Bank Botswana’s passions carried through programs initiated by the government.
“The government is actively involved in developing entrepreneurship,” she says.
Another of the bank’s focal points is investing in cutting-edge technology that enhances efficiency levels across the business for the consumer.
“One of the government’s aims in Botswana is to bank the unbanked and we are firmly set on this path.”
Recently, the bank continued its digital journey which started with mobile banking followed by internet banking, and international money transfers, where customers can pay school fees or suppliers across the borders by launching a card-less cash deposit service which allows for real-time card-less cash deposits into its accounts by both customers and non-customers at any time and on their own.
And, despite Barclays PLC’s divestment in Barclays Africa, there are still many opportunities and resources for the bank to explore in this space.
Under Van der Merwe’s leadership, the bank has been named Botswana’s ‘Bank of the Year 2016’ by Acquisition International. She attributes some of the success to policies enabling ease of business drafted by the country’s leadership.
“The future of the bank is very exciting as we look to continue developing it as a pan-African bank,” says Van der Merwe.
“We are looking forward to a lot more creativity in making [Barclays Bank Botswana] Africa relevant. We can determine how we want to do business in Africa for Africans and if you look at the divestment which took place in June, it was oversubscribed, so clearly, the market has a lot of faith in the management of the group.
“There’s nothing that stops this group from expanding into the rest of Africa, Asia and even back into London as an African brand,” she laughs. &#8211; Written by Rofhiwa Madzena

The Only Woman In The Boardroom

We are at Barclays Africa’s steel-and-glass offices in Africa’s richest square mile, Sandton, talking about a world far, far away – in rural Africa.
A world where Zimbabwe-born Sazini Mojapelo, Group Head of Corporate Citizenship at Barclays, raised by a single mother, first started, in the remote communities of her home country where subsistence farming, women-headed households and rural to urban migration were the norm.
Her work with an NGO led her to a Master’s degree in Development Studies from the University of Cape Town and subsequently, a job with the government.
“It became quite important for me to get into policy and understanding the way public-private partnership works, how policy frameworks are developed and governments function,” says Mojapelo.
She soon founded Hand in Hand, and grew the organization beyond South Africa to countries including Swaziland, Lesotho and Zimbabwe helping women grow their small businesses and supporting them with micro-financing.
A corporate career was on the cards.
“For me, it was important to have experience from government, civil society and the private sector. I wanted to get into all three areas of private-public partnership; the tri-sector conversation. To make a sustainable and meaningful contribution in the areas we operate in, it does not take one player alone.”
For Mojapelo, it had to involve the communities as well – the voices of the people.
“When I worked in government I did really feel the responsibility of caring for the people and their livelihoods. The sense of purpose is very strong, but the inefficiencies that come within that space are very crippling, where things don’t move forward, and the political element does not help as well,” says Mojapelo.
When she got the opportunity to join Barclays in 2015, she wasted no time.
“At Barclays, we look at how we can be good corporate citizens in the communities we operate in… We have introduced a strategy founded on the principles of creating shared value. Basically what that means is how we are able to have a commercial competitive advantage while driving the social agenda and creating impact.”
The bank’s Shared Growth strategy was launched in 2016, looking at education, enterprise development and financial inclusion across Africa.
For education, Mojapelo categorizes the youth as employed, under-employed and unemployed.
“If you look at the employed, most young people do get employed but you find they are under-employed – where a doctor is working at a call center; they have a job but they are not doing the job they studied for. And then you got those who are Not in Education Employment or Training who fall in what we call the NEET category; who are unemployable, because either they have dropped out of school, they do not have a skill that can enable them to move into the next phase of their life and that category of young people is where the most focus should be, and the ability to start looking at how we use technology to create and open opportunities for those young people,” says Mojapelo.
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She also admits to several anxious moments when she moved to the corporate world.
“I had some anxiety on my side in terms of my ability to land effectively and be able to achieve the agenda that I really want to drive from a corporate perspective. The biggest part for me was literally looking at the agenda, that I have a personal agenda of creating a meaningful change in people’s lives and creating that kind of social impact. So it was key to change the strategy and introduce a way of working that made business realize that the social agenda is a business agenda.
“So in Barclays, you find that big corporate clients will work with us based on how you treat the ESG (environmental, social and governance) element. It has become very important within the business.”
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One of Mojapelo’s passions is financial inclusion – especially of women.
“For Barclays, I think it’s a space we dream about disrupting and in its entirety that is integrated banking but it’s really from a shift in the mind-set of asking what the customer wants and how do we service them better.”
Far from the farms and fields of Zimbabwe, to the smart Sandton boardroom we are in, this Harvard Business School graduate has her sights set on one dream – a better Africa.

Tag: Barclays

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

The Only Woman In The Boardroom

‘The Social Agenda Is A Business Agenda’