Hippo Valley Estates Acting Chief Executive Officer, Aiden Mhere, has been declared the 2017 Chartered Secretary of the Year. The runner-up is Posts and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (Potraz) corporate services director, Avilla Dororosa Goba.
Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators in Zimbabwe (ICSAZ) secretary and chief executive Farai Musamba made the announcement at the institute’s annual conference banquet held at the Elephant Hills Resort in Victoria Falls on Friday (September 28) evening.
Mr Mhere was a few weeks ago appointed acting chief executive officer of Hippo Valley Estates, which has the overall responsibility for Tongaat Hullet businesses in Zimbabwe.
According to the citation read by Dr Musamba before he was presented with the Chartered Secretary of the Year Trophy, Mr Mhere last year championed and succeeded in putting together the commercial framework that led to the formation of the Fuel Ethanol Company of Zimbabwe (FECZ),which is Zimbabwe’s second largest fuel ethanol producer.
FECZ was incorporated in June 2017. It officially started trading in fuel ethanol in August of the same year. The company is a private-public partnership in which government, through the National Oil Company of Zimbabwe, holds 50 percent of the equity.
The company is highly productive and empowers local sugarcane farmers whose molasses are purchased for feedstock in ethanol production. FECZ’s contribution to Zimbabwe’s foreign currency reserves by way of import substitution is significant.
Dr Musamba added that Mr Mhere has a passion for community development and personally contributes to society through education, sports and economic empowerment initiatives.
He said Mr Mhere is an educationist at heart, having graduated from Gweru Teacher’s College. He contributed immensely to the success of Trust Academy as its principal.
He was also instrumental in the registration of Trust Academy as a college and ran the institution for three years on behalf of the Zimbabwe Project Trust.
Dr Musamba went on to say Mr Mhere is in the process of setting up formal structures to establish an education foundation which he hopes will be in place by the end of 2019.
Mr Mhere is an associate member of ICSAZ. He holds a Master of Business Administration Degree from the University of Zimbabwe. He also holds an Advanced Management Programme qualification from the University of Pretoria and University of London.
He has more than 30 years’ experience in a wide range of business activities, which include lecturing, accountancy, general management and administration.
At Hippo Valley Estates, Mr Mhere has the overall responsibility for running key business operations, which include sugar production, an ethanol plant and animal feeds factory in Triangle as well as the estate’s marketing and procurement division, enterprise development division and livestock production unit.
Mrs Goba, the runner-up for the 2017 Chartered Secretary of the Year Award, is a fellow member and past president of ICSAZ.
She holds a Master of Business Administration degree. She is currently finalising her Doctorate in Business Administration with the University of Lusaka.
Mrs Goba has over 35 years of extensive professional experience at different levels of supervisory management with specific areas of expertise in administration and human resources management.
In 2016 she chaired a number of regional meetings within the Communications Regulators Association of Southern Africa (CRASA).
This helped deal with corporate governance issues at a regional level in member countries, including Zimbabwe, thus promoting good leadership and the compliance expected in company secretarial practice.
Mrs Goba’s human resources skills contributed to the recruitment and retention of people with critical skills at Potraz.
In administration, Mrs Goba was part of the Potraz team that worked on the construction of the authority’s headquarters, which Potraz moved into in September last year thus eliminating rent costs.
As part of her personal corporate social responsibility, Mrs Goba is a life member of the Jairos Jiri Association and vice-chairperson of the association’s Harare branch.
