Unilever East Africa boss Luck Ochieng has worked across nearly every area of the manufacturing value chain, rising to his current role as Managing Director of the consumer goods company. 

His career spans market development, distribution, financial services marketing, and technology. Before joining Unilever, he held key roles at telcos Safaricom PLC and Airtel, as well as beverage manufacturers Diageo, and Coca-Cola Holdings.

In an exclusive interview with award-winning journalist Paul Wafula on The Business Beat Podcast, Mr. Ochieng discussed East Africa’s business environment, Unilever’s regional strategy, greenwashing, the challenges of counterfeiting Royco, and his perspectives on claims that the UK-headquartered firm has been considering exit from Kenya. 

As the MD overseeing Unilever operations in Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Uganda, he explains how he balances leadership at the giant corporation with family and community through roles as a father, husband, village elder and business leader.

Q: There have been numerous reports that some multinationals are planning to exit Kenya. To set the record straight, are you [Unilever] leaving Kenya? 

The business environment is not easy, it's tough. In that tough environment, some organisations find that they cannot handle it. But the commitment that Unilever has for this part of the world is such that it continues to invest, even after 83 years and counting.

Q: But there have to be some challenges. What are the challenges you’re looking at as a manufacturer at your scale? 

The first one is probably a situation where you don't have a reliable or consistent tax and policy environment. And you know, an organisation like ours, you need a place where the tax and fiscal policy environments are predictable to the extent that then you can plan for the long run. 

The other one is just the cost of doing business. If you were to benchmark the cost of electricity between Kenya and other countries in the region, you'll find that we are already like 70 percent off versus our neighbours, for example, Uganda. In a market like Egypt, the government provides a lot of incentives to manufacturers…So, you find that it's actually cheaper to produce elsewhere versus producing here. 

Q: If you were to speak to a policymaker today, what would you say are some of the policy gaps that have to be addressed?

The first one is about getting a predictable tax environment. The national tax policy poses a situation whereby we get stability for at least a five-year period. But while the policies are in place, the challenge comes in the execution or the implementation…I would say, can you please work around giving us a more predictable environment that can allow us to invest more in the market? 

The second thing is this famous animal called pending bills. In our environments, the pending bill manifests, for example, in tax refunds. Sometimes this can take long, and that is actually very crippling from a working capital perspective. You find that we have opportunities we see across East Africa to invest even more. But then we are forced to go to our parent company to look for money. 

Q: How is a typical day for you here at Unilever and how do you describe a good day? 

My typical day starts at around 8am. Depending on the day, if it's a Monday, we have a bonding call with the team across the region. Then I get into usual sessions, meetings, and reviews with the team in Kenya, but also connect online with the team based in Uganda, for example. 

Later on in the afternoon, on Mondays, generally, it's a connection that we have with the rest of the team across East and West Africa. Depending on the day, my day would normally end at about 6pm. But some days when I have an evening function, then you can go till late as well. 

I'm a very competitive person and I like winning. And for me, a good day is when we are winning in terms of how much money we bring in. 

Q: What is the size of Unilever East Africa in terms of investment, staff and production capacity? 

Unilever is a global organisation. In sub-Saharan Africa, we have five manufacturing setups: South Africa, Kenya, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Ghana. From Nairobi, this factory serves the rest of the East Africa region, consisting of, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Rwanda.

We have the privilege of also exporting beyond the East Africa region. We, for example, supply some of our Royco products to Southern African countries and also a few shipments that we do to the US.

Q: What is your most successful product as Unilever East Africa? 

Unilever essentially has five divisions: Ice cream, beauty and well-being, personal-care, home-care, and food. In this factory, we produce four of those. We produce food products, of which Royco is one. We produce a home-care range, of which your favourite Omo hand-wash powder is another, and we’ve beauty and well-being products, for example, your Vaseline petroleum jelly. Then we have a personal-care range for example, Geisha soap. Those are the four divisions that we produce from this factory in Nairobi. 

Now, we have all grown up with various product ranges. But when I sit back and reflect, I can't miss my Mchuzi mix. You know, growing up, when you come back home from school, you're hungry, you find your folks have prepared your meal for you. There's sukumawiki there or githeri with some Mchuzi mix. That's something I've grown up with.

Q: Is there a reason why it has become so difficult to counterfeit Royco?

It is the way in which it's prepared and the standards that go into its production. It's very difficult for anybody to go out there and counterfeit it. So you’re always assured that what you're getting is the real deal. Also very nourishing, good for your health, made from natural ingredients. 

Q: Sustainability is a big buzzword here in Kenya. But we are also being confronted by the reality of greenwashing that is running side by side with this sustainability push. What is your position on matters greenwashing?

We've actually been an industry leader in shaping and driving the sustainability agenda. Our sustainability agenda is built around two pillars: One, the livelihoods that we touch, and two, we are very intentional about addressing the plastic menace in this environment. 

We are putting our money where our mouth is to the extent that, apart from influencing what happens in the industry, we put money behind partners we can work with to actually complete that circularity that we talk about. 

The commitment we have is that we are setting up an infrastructure that can allow us to support recycling more than what we put in the market. In the long run, we are either going to have reusable packaging, compostable or recyclable, 100 percent. 

Q: You must be lucky, working in most of these companies that everybody wants to work in. What makes you so attractive to the blue chips?

I thank my mother, she gave me the name Luck and then the name has come to life. I've been blessed to have the opportunity to work in those blue chip organisations. Those organisations themselves are pretty demanding, but also fantastic grounds to learn and grow. And they offered me those opportunities to build myself and to grow, to be where I am. 

Q: What should we expect from Unilever going forward into the near future?

When we look at the region in totality, it offers great promise overall. And as I said, over 200 million consumers, a very young population, technology savvy, very well exposed. 

This part of the world is very well networked with the rest of the world. So, we actually see opportunities for us to actually be growing even more for the long run. So when we look into the crystal ball, we only see success, and us being present in this market for even much longer and contributing even more than we have so far. 

But then if I go down the value chain from a sourcing perspective, we actually are very intentional about localising the procurement of raw materials that come into producing our products.

Let me share some numbers with you. In 2021, we had 70 percent of the raw materials going into our production being imported. As at the end of last year, or the beginning of this year, we flipped that number—70 percent of the inputs is now sourced locally versus what it was before. 

How did that happen? We went through our raw material sourcing and identified what we were getting from out and where there was opportunity to switch to local sources or where there was a good enough substitute that we could source locally. Imagine a situation where we are pumping in KES6 billion into the local economy through local suppliers. 

Q: How does somebody join your value chain? What do you expect from them?

We have a procurement team whose job is actually to go through that. Every two to three years, we refresh and look for potential suppliers. We take them through our requirements and that sometimes requires training as well. We have this programme with the SME Support Centre, for example, where we take potential suppliers through training. 

They then go through a rigorous process where they submit what they can supply. And at the end of the day, we choose three or four suppliers depending on which part of the business we're in.

Q: What should I start growing to access an aggregator and enter your value chain?

The first thing is to connect you with the aggregator, for example, Njoro Canning Factory [Kenya] Ltd, and then depending on your location, they would link you up and say, okay, this is what we need. 

Q: You talked about financing distributors and SMEs and I know it's in the public domain. How does one get into this?

When one joins the value chain, for example, as part of our training programme, part of it involves how to handle financing and where to get it from. If you are a retailer, for example, we have this Jazaduka programme where we are supporting 15,000 retailers. The [financing] connection happens through the distributors, who supply you. They help you to sign up and then bring in the banking partner. 

Q: I know you're not the HR director and there's a hiring process. How do I get a job opportunity at Unilever? 

Every role that we have, we actually advertise it and put it out in the public domain. The primary platform that we use is LinkedIn and make it open to all potentially qualified. At the same time, when you go to that LinkedIn site and click, it will take you to the Unilever site. So, you can either go directly to the Unilever site or use the LinkedIn connection. But if you go directly to the Unilever site, you also see opportunities that are available all over the world.

Q: You told me you're a family man. If you were to advise your son or daughter today, where will you tell them to invest?

My son, and my daughter are still young so the biggest investment that they can make is in their education. But it should be technology-led investment, where they prepare themselves to be the people to shape what happens in this AI [Artificial Intelligence] world that we’re in.

Q: And where are you putting your money? 

I’m paying for their school fees. I have my son who is doing a programme called Game Design and essentially, it's about designing programmes that support visualisation of analytics for businesses. My daughters, one of them, is doing math and physics and there's a slant towards analytics. The other one is doing business analytics.