The food scientist running Uganda’s biggest network.

Sylvia Mulinge wanted to study pharmacy. She missed it “by a point” and enrolled in food science and technology at the University of Nairobi, a course she calls “not my ideal one”. She graduated in 2000 with First Class Honours. “I studied food science at the University of Nairobi. I did well,” she told KTN’s Everyday Woman in 2020. “I thought I would go and work in the factory.”

She never did. Twenty-six years later she runs MTN Uganda, the country’s largest mobile operator and its first company led by a woman. In the six months to June 2026, profit after tax rose 37.7% to UGX 367.5 billion and the subscriber base reached 25.4 million. The first quarter had been rough. An internet shutdown during January’s general election cut data and mobile money services, and quarterly profit fell 3.8%.

The question that has steered her through all of it has not changed. “The principle in my life is, in every space where I am planted, how do I maximise the value that I bring in that space?”

Nakuru.

Mulinge was born in 1977. Her father was an engineer. Her mother was a secretary at a Kenyan bank. At St Xavier’s Primary School in Nakuru she joined the drama and debate clubs, and she remembers “chasing down a boy who was bullying some of my friends”. At secondary school the whole school was once punished together, and she took a lesson from it that she still repeats: “winning by yourself is not as meaningful as when it is a group.”

Soap, then airtime.

In August 2004 she joined Unilever as an assistant regional brand manager in its laundry division in Durban, South Africa. Nine months later she was in Nairobi as brand manager for Sunlight. In February 2006 she crossed to Safaricom as manager of its prepaid product. “So it’s the same customer mentality, just a different product,” she said of the move.

Safaricom promoted her almost every two years:

• head of retail in November 2007, eight months after M-Pesa launched;
• head of Safaricom Business in 2009;
• general manager for enterprise in 2011;
• director of consumer business in 2015.

When she left in 2022, chief executive Peter Ndegwa called her “a purpose-led and impact-driven business leader”.

The permit.

In April 2018 Vodacom named her chief executive designate of Vodacom Tanzania, to start on 1 June. The start never came. In September, under the late President John Magufuli, Tanzanian authorities declined to issue her a work permit, and Vodacom said it would find someone else. Safaricom took her back on 1 October as director of special projects. A month later she was chief customer officer. She later became chief consumer business officer and sat on the executive committee until she left.

Two years after Tanzania, asked on KTN how she deals with bias and criticism, she answered with a question: “How do you take what they are giving to you and ferment it into something that gives you energy to scale that challenge?”

It is a food scientist’s verb.

Kampala.

On 3 October 2022, her first morning at MTN Uganda, staff turned up in traditional dress. “Thanks to MTN Staff for showcasing the beautiful pieces of Ugandan culture this morning,” she said, and signed off in Swahili: “Asante sana.” She was the first woman, and the first Kenyan, to run the company. It had listed on the Uganda Securities Exchange 10 months earlier and ended 2022 with 17.2 million subscribers.

The 2025 profit includes a one-off UGX 110.9 billion settlement with the Uganda Revenue Authority. Without it, profit rose 23.1% to UGX 789.7 billion. The board paid out UGX 643.7 billion in dividends for the year and moved shareholders to quarterly payments.

On 28 July 2023, in the Kampala suburbs of Lugogo and Bugoloobi, MTN switched on Uganda’s first commercial 5G network, days ahead of Airtel. “We’re incredibly proud to go live with a 5G network in Uganda,” Mulinge said. By February 2025 the company had more than 550 5G sites.

Mobile money, run by a subsidiary whose board she chairs, had 14.7 million active users at the end of 2025. It is served by more than 241,000 agents and 114,000 merchants. In the first half of 2026 it carried 2.6 billion transactions worth UGX 113.3 trillion.

The programmes she launched carry the same arithmetic. In October 2023 she launched the Advancing Women Entrepreneurs project, a UGX 15 billion plan to bring 250 women-owned businesses into MTN’s supply chain by 2025. “The goal of the AWE project is ambitious yet achievable,” she said. In July 2025 the MTN Foundation graduated 298 young women from its Girls in Tech and Girls with Tools programmes in coding, graphic design and cybersecurity.

In February 2025, at MTN’s Global Leadership Gathering in Johannesburg, the group named her chief executive of the year across its 20 markets. MTN Uganda took Best OpCo of the Year the same night. Her post afterwards: “See what the Lord has done! What an amazing surprise! I’m still processing.”

There have been worse days. On 5 July 2026, a power failure at an MTN Uganda data centre knocked out voice, data and mobile money. She faced reporters in Kampala. “We sincerely apologise to every customer who was affected,” she said. “MTN Uganda is here to stay.”

Weights, dance floors and Sunday dinners.

Away from the results tables, Mulinge posts videos of herself lifting weights in the gym and dancing with her children. Her conference bios list her as an enthusiast for healthy living and fitness. In March 2023 she shared a clip with the comedian Anne Kansiime, who complained that the chief executive was “actually taller than me” and then called her “mummy”. Mulinge’s reply: “No! I hate you!”

She is the mother of two teenagers. In 2025 her daughter was at school in Kenya and her son in the UK. Sunday dinners, she says, end in “praying for the coming week”. She does not claim to have solved the arithmetic of being a parent. “I may never be there for all their moments but I will always make sure that I am there for most.”

She is blunt about what makes that possible. “There are choices you have to make in terms of what can I outsource,” she said in 2020. Her aim is that “my life at home, which is just as important to me as my life at work, doesn’t suffer”. In 2025 she named the trap: “The challenge we have as women is trying to be a superwoman and end up crashing, in the process.”

Reaching back.

Mulinge is a certified executive coach and mentor, and she talks about mentorship as a debt. “As women we have to learn how to support one another, sharing our stories, sharing our scars,” she said. “If you have gone ahead, how many women are you reaching back?”

She has chaired the committee of the President’s Award, Kenya’s youth achievement scheme, since June 2019 and sits on its board. She advises Shining Hope for Communities on health and education in urban informal settlements. She chairs the Maasai Mara Wildlife Conservancies Association.

Kenya has made her a Moran of the Order of the Burning Spear. She was named a Young Global Leader in 2015, and one of Business Daily’s Top 40 Women Under 40 in Kenya in 2014. Avance Media listed her among the 100 Most Influential African Women in 2020, and CIO Africa named her among the continent’s 45 most influential women in digital transformation in 2023.

Her advice to younger women has not softened with seniority. “Your life will expand or contract based on your level of courage,” she said in 2020. In 2025 she put it more plainly: “We need courageous women who believe in themselves to pitch, show up and do a job well.”

The next number.

In August she set MTN Uganda’s medium-term target herself: “upper-teen service revenue growth”, while the company invests “to meet licence obligations and reinforce our competitive positioning”. In the first half of 2026, service revenue grew 9.4%.