The Regional Head of IBM North, East and West Africa, Mrs Angela Kyerematen-Jimoh, has been named in the list of 50 women chief executive officers (CEOs) leading corporate Africa.

The list was compiled by Africa.com over many months through a deep research effort to examine the management of big businesses in Africa.

Africa.com is a media holding company with an extensive array of platforms that reach a global audience interested in African content and community.

Big business, for this purpose, is defined as being listed on one of Africa’s stock exchanges and having a market capitalisation of over $150 million or being a global publicly listed company with a market capitalisation of over $50 billion and significant operations in Africa.

Harvard Business School Professor Mayo, will today at a summit present his research findings on what it takes for African-American women to reach the top spot in the corporate sector.

At this event, the names of the 50 women on the list will be revealed.

In addition, a panel of women from the list would tell the stories of their rise to the top of corporate Africa, and comment on Professor Mayo’s research by addressing what it takes to make it to the top in Africa, specifically.

Another panel featuring heads of major African stock exchanges will discuss what stock exchanges are doing globally to push for more women in big business.

Methodology

The Africa.com Definitive List of Women CEOs is the product of a data-driven research project that began by identifying all publicly listed companies on all of the 21 stock exchanges in Africa - a list of over 1400 companies.

From there, the researchers screened the companies to focus on the largest companies — those with a market capitalisation of $150 million or larger, resulting in a list of 355 corporations.
Once the researchers had identified these 355 companies, the largest in Africa, they then searched the public information available on the management teams of these companies.

In order to qualify for the list, women must have a CEO or managing director title as the head of one of these companies.

The titles are then vetted further by examining where the women fit within the company’s overall organisational structure to ensure that the women truly hold authority that is consistent with their title.