With Jimmy Mugerwa appointed Country Manager and Grace Kavuma, Finance Manager, both in the last six months, Tullow Oil has largely localized the upper ranks of its Ugandan workforce.
The jobs used to be done by Europeans. Eoin Mekie was the last Country Manager of European origin for Tullow in Uganda. He left the job in November 2012.
Mugerwa and Kavuma come to their jobs with considerable qualification and some see their placement as quite strategic. With Tullow’s completion of the sale of two third of its assets in the Albertine graben to France’s Total and China’s CNOOC — a process that was delayed by a capital tax impasse and negotiations over a stabilization clause — the national conversation is around how Ugandans will benefit from this natural resource.
The government is considering the partners’ plan of development of the Albertine Basin, where Tullow claims there has been 1 Billion Barrels of Oil discovered and there’s potential to find another 800Million barrels. The Ugandan government has been quite vocal about “detailed programme for recruitment and training of Ugandans.
A Bachelor of Science graduate in Agriculture from Makerere University, who holds Masters’ degree in the same course from the University of Wales, and attended an executive business leadership programme in Lausanne, Switzerland, Mugerwa arrived Tullow Oil by way of Shell Kenya of which he was chairman. He had worked at Shell Ghana, South Africa, Uganda and in the Netherlands.
Kavuma, meanwhile, was executive director and chief financial officer at the Development Finance Company of Uganda(DFCU) Bank, a position he held after working at Barclays Bank Uganda and Shell Africa.
