The woman who holds Vodacom’s purse strings

Vodacom chief financial officer Raisibe Morathi is a financial services veteran with numerous accolades, including winning the 2024 CFO of the Year award at the CNBC All Africa Business Leaders Awards (AABLA).

Morathi was born in Polokwane and was a highly talented learner. She skipped grade nine to complete high school in four years instead of five.

She has always loved accounting and commerce, which prompted her to complete a BCom degree at the University of Venda and later become a chartered accountant (SA).

She continued her academic pursuits after her career started and completed numerous professional qualifications.

This included a Master of Philosophy in Corporate Strategy from the University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science.

She also holds an advanced diploma in taxation and a certificate in corporate governance and completed INSEAD’s advanced management programme.

She started her career as a trainee accountant at Fisher Hoffman Stride before moving into the banking world.

She worked in structured and corporate finance at Nedbank, HSBC Investment Bank, and African Merchant Bank before joining the IDC as chief operating officer in 2000.

In 2008, she was appointed chief executive officer of group services at finance service provider Sanlam.

She then moved to Nedbank, where she served as group chief financial officer from 2009 to 2020.

At Nedbank, she led a team of over 900 people involved in finance and operations and was focused on strategic decision-making that impacted the Group.

For most of her tenure at Nedbank, she was the patron of its Women’s Forum, demonstrating her commitment to the development of women and young people.

On 1 November 2020, Vodacom appointed Morathi its group chief financial officer, a position she still holds.

In an interview with Engineering News, she described her management style as engaging and coaching with a focus on outcomes, results, and goals.

She said she was particularly proud of successfully replacing an enterprise resource planning system for human resources, finance and procurement.

She also remembers closing various merger-and-acquisition deals throughout her career with fondness.

Morathi said she draws inspiration from people like Richard Branson, the British entrepreneur, philanthropist, and founder of Virgin Group.

Raisibe Morathi recognised at the 2024 AABLA awards

Morathi won the 2024 CFO of the Year award at the CNBC All Africa Business Leaders Awards (AABLA), recognising her contribution to the business world.

The AABLAs was established in 2013 to celebrate excellence, innovation, and leadership across Africa’s business landscape.

They are recognised as one of the continent’s most prestigious accolades, honouring outstanding achievements by business leaders.

Previous winners include the who’s who of the African business world, including Jannie Mouton, Wendy Appelbaum, Christo Wiese, and Adrian Gore.

Stephen Saad, Brian Joffe, Ivan & Lynette Saltzman, Sol Kerzner, and Reuel Khoza were also recognised at the AABLAs.

Two current Vodacom Group board members, Nomkhita Nqweni and Phuti Mahanyele-Dabengwa, are also previous Aabla winners having being recognised as Business Woman of The Year in 2018 and 2019 respectively.

Businesswoman of the Year

Morathi dedicated the award to many men and women who have been part of her career journey.

The 2024 AABLA recognition followed her winning the 2023 CFO of the Year Award from CFO South Africa.

Commenting on her industry, she said as CFO, there is always business planning and performance, stakeholder engagements, and supporting business with commercial opportunities.

“There are always various projects within the realm of these day-to-day objectives too,” she told CFO South Africa.

Her advice to new CFOs is to enhance their decision-making through AI, big data, and analytics, which remove the manual task of calculating and analysing insights.

“It assists you in getting more granular and accurately computed information, in a fraction of the time,” she said.

“In a nutshell, embrace technology, and you’ll see your commercial decisions improve significantly.”