Kemi Omotosho will take over as Chief Executive Officer of MultiChoice Nigeria in January 2026, succeeding John Ugbe after his nearly 15-year run at the company.
Her appointment closes one chapter for MultiChoice Nigeria and opens another led by an executive who has spent over a decade inside the business, enhancing how it acquires, keeps, and grows customers across Africa.
Omotosho’s climb to the top job did not follow a straight line. Trained initially as a biochemist, she entered the workforce through customer service roles before finding her footing in telecommunications.
At Airtel Nigeria, where she spent more than ten years, she moved steadily through sales, enterprise accounts, and postpaid retention. By the time Omotosho left, she was managing high-value customers, corporate portfolios, and profitability metrics in one of Nigeria’s most competitive sectors.
That grounding in telecoms would later define her value at MultiChoice.
She joined the company in 2014 as Head of Retention in Nigeria, at a time when pay-TV operators were beginning to feel pressure from pricing sensitivity, piracy, and changing viewing habits. Her brief was to keep subscribers active and paying. What followed was a restructuring of how MultiChoice approached customer value.
Under her leadership, retention stopped being reactive. Campaigns were built on data, segmentation was refined, and outbound operations were scaled to support millions of subscribers across DStv and GOtv.
Omotosho introduced customer groupings based on spending behaviour, device type, and tenure, a shift that allowed the business to target offers with more precision and improve average revenue per user without blunt price increases.
She stayed as close to the numbers while still keeping people at the centre of strategy. That balance became her calling card.
By 2018, Kemi Omotosho was trusted with bigger responsibilities, first as Head of Customer Lifecycle Management, then as Group Executive Head of Customer Value Management for Africa.
From Dubai, she oversaw strategy, budgets, and execution across multiple markets, driving key indicators such as churn reduction, digital product uptake, and revenue growth.
She also led internal transformation initiatives, from programme management adoption to agile planning, helping align operations across regions that rarely move at the same speed.
In 2023, she was appointed Regional Director for Southern Africa, expanding her scope beyond customer strategy into full operational leadership. The role placed her in charge of subscriber growth, revenue, profitability, and execution across several Southern African markets, with responsibility for brands including DStv, GOtv, and Showmax.
It was a test of scale and complexity, and by all accounts, she delivered.
Her leadership style is usually described as customer-first, but that undersells the discipline behind it. Omotosho is known for operational rigour, clear accountability, and teams that understand exactly what success looks like.
She mentors extensively, builds systems that outlast individuals, and favours measurable impact.
Academically, she has continued to invest in herself, earning an Executive MBA from Lagos Business School and completing executive programmes at institutions including Harvard and INSEAD. The mix of local business training and global exposure shows up in how she runs organisations, grounded, but not inward-looking.
Her appointment as CEO will ensure continuity rather than disruption. MultiChoice Nigeria is currently facing challenges including slimmer consumer spending, growing competition from streaming platforms, and a change in content consumption.
Omotosho steps into the role with institutional memory, regional perspective, and a solid understanding of Nigerian customers.
In the new role, Kemi Omotosho is expected to ensure steady, informed change across MultiChoice Nigeria, and this is exactly what’s needed in today’s media market.
