Christopher Akiwumi – GC Powerlist
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Africa 2015

Christopher Akiwumi

Legal director | Microsoft

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Africa 2015

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Christopher Akiwumi

Legal director | Microsoft

About

With diverse sector experience, Christopher Akiwumi has ‘exceptional leadership skills’ and ‘out-of-the-box thinking’, according to sources. He has handled game-changing transactions for the companies he works for, and taken a pivotal role in building relationships with governments across the region.

In 2014, Akiwumi made his most recent move to Microsoft, where he heads legal and corporate affairs for the whole of Sub-Saharan Africa. Five months into the role, and in the early days following the Nokia merger, ‘integration’, he says, is the focus.

It has been a conscious move on his part, he says, to move frequently across different businesses and sectors. ‘I always try to find new challenges in and around Africa, as the continent and the people are my passion’, he explains, adding: ‘There’s always the challenge around how organisations put the strategy together and how they execute strategy in Africa. I like to be very close to and involved in applying these strategic decisions. It’s such a diverse continent with multiple legal systems, and developing legal and regulatory framework’.

In his first in-house role at Barclays, Akiwumi spent three years building a legal function from scratch, covering the entire continent, excluding South Africa. He then became GE’s first in-house lawyer in the continent, where he played an intrinsic role in developing the Africa business, negotiating contracts directly with governments, and putting best practices in place.

One of the greatest hurdles, he says, has been countering preconceptions and persuading the business to invest further in the region. ‘Getting the private sector to commit resources in a region that did and does not have the best compliance track record was exceptionally difficult’, he says. ‘I would consider one of my biggest career achievements to be becoming a trusted expert and advisor to multinationals’.

Operating within a developing legal market, Akiwumi has made it a focus, throughout his career, to build up multi-jurisdictional law firm networks to act as a one-stop shop in major transactions. ‘As a multinational it’s much easier for us to work with a firm or “network” of firms with good reach across the continent’, he explains. ‘This helps with quality control and managing/negotiating legal fees. Additionally, having a network that understands the corporate approach to compliance and legal issues creates a partnership that helps in-house counsel manage their internal stakeholder at “headquarters”’’.

These conglomerations of firms are a legacy which he has been happy to leave with each organisation as he moves on, and a model which, he says, has been followed by other in-house functions in the region.

As someone intricately experienced in multinationals doing business in Africa, Akiwumi says ‘local knowledge’ is key. ‘Business in Africa, maybe more than anywhere else in the world, is very much about relationship building – that’s how you grow’.

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