Isabel dos Santos, Unitel awarded prestigious financial sector awards

Global Banking and Finance Awards 2019 celebrate both dos Santos and Unitel as Angolan industry leaders.

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LONDON, UK - Media OutReach - 2 January 2020 - The
Global Banking and Finance Review has named Isabel dos Santos the best Angolan
chairperson for 2019, and her company Unitel the best telecommunications
company in Angola for 2019.

 

Dos Santos owns
25 percent of Unitel, Angola’s largest telecoms company. She also sits on its
board and last March had her board membership renewed.

 

The Angolan
investor has been busy this past year. In 2019, Unitel became the first Angolan
Associate Partner of the World Economic Forum. This exclusive club of corporate
partners help WEF implement its vision in Africa and attend summits all over
the world. The only other African partner is the Dangote Group. They both join
giants such as Alibaba, Facebook, Google, and the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation.

 

“This is a very
big achievement for us,” dos Santos said at the time of the announcement. “The
management team is very proud to be part of this exclusive partnership and
network of impressive business leaders. We have a very clear exciting path of
growth and look forward to speaking about it at next WEF Davos.”

 

In November, dos
Santos attended AfricaCom 2019 as Unitel’s representative and called for global
investors to pave the way for 5G.

 

“I would like to
see in the Energy sector the same thing that happened in the Telecommunications
sector: a big investment from the private sector,” she said in Cape Town.
“Today we are 1.2 billion people in Africa, by 2050 we will be 2.4 billion —
more than in China. The investment required in infrastructure is huge”.

 

She said that
her company had invested $2.2 billion in fibre optic cables over the past two
decades: “Today we have 14,000 km of optical fibre, we promote the expansion of
the internet nationwide with one of the most modern telecommunications networks
in Africa.”

 

That fibre optic
network, which is now operational, connects Angola with Brazil.

 

Dos Santos
helped found Unitel in the dying days of the Angolan Civil War, and after the conflict
ended capital was hard to find.

 

Speaking about
her early days at Unitel, she said: “We re-invested every single penny we made
in the company and there were no dividends for the shareholders. The
infrastructure of the country in terms of telecoms was inadequate and
definitely fell very short in terms of capacity.”

 

Dos Santos has
done her best to promote a sense of corporate social responsibility at Unitel. It
selected six young Angolans to do a postgraduate degree in agriculture at the
Royal Agricultural University in Britain, for example.

 

It is also a
leader in workplace gender equality, with 37 percent of its overall employees
being women; 40 percent of its management are women and 20 percent of its
technical staff are women.

 

Other than
Unitel, she also has a host of other investments, not least EFACEC Power
Solutions.

 

EFACEC is a
Portuguese energy and transport company specializing in charging infrastructure
for electric vehicles. Dos Santos sits on the board, and last year the company was
ranked among the top five recognized brands in the energy and utility sector.
She aims to increase the share of EFACEC’s total turnover derived from electric
mobility from 6 percent to 15 percent.

 

So far, the
company has managed to triple the production of fast and ultra-fast chargers
for electric batteries as well as launch new charging facilities.

 

The Global
Banking and Finance Review is a UK-based financial magazine first launched in
2011. Its annual Global Banking and Finance Awards rewards those who have
carried out inspirational, innovative and progressive achievements in the
financial sector.