Fred W. Waithaka
Acting Chief Corporate Affairs Officer
Fred is the Head of Regulatory & Public Policy at Safaricom. In his acting capacity as Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, Fred is responsible for Safaricom’s reputation management, public policy, legal and regulatory affairs. He oversees development and implementation of Safaricom’s corporate investment strategy as well as overseeing internal and external communications. He also leads the development of a roadmap that will embed purpose in everything we do at Safaricom and among our stakeholders.
A commercially astute, pragmatic and solutions focused leader, Fred has over 20 years of post-admission experience in corporate and private practice. He joined Safaricom in 2017 as Head of Legal and Secretarial Services from Seacom Ltd where he initially served as Regional Counsel before growing to the Head of Legal position overseeing Seacom’s legal and regulatory affairs department with oversight of 7 countries. Prior to joining Seacom, Fred was Principal In-house Counsel at Safaricom for 6 years, and before that, he was a Legal Associate at Kaplan & Stratton Advocates.
He is passionate about growing his impact and has a demonstrated ability to cultivate an engaging team culture and in leading high-performance teams. In his previous role as Head of Legal, he led his team to win two coveted awards: the 2022 Africa Legal Awards Corporate Legal Department of the Year Award (the first time the award was issued to a corporate legal department outside of South Africa); and the 2018-19 Corporate Legal Department of the Year Award from the Law Society of Kenya.
He holds a Bachelor of Laws (LL. B Hons) from the University of Bedfordshire. and a Postgraduate Diploma from the Kenya School of Law. He is an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya and a Commissioner for Oaths.
Fred was awarded the Chambers and Partners GC Influencer Award in 2021 and was listed in the 2017 Legal 500 Africa General Counsel Power List. He was also shortlisted for the 2023 Regulatory (non-financial services) award at Lexology’s 16th annual Global Counsel Awards.