ACHA LEKE

ENGAGEMENT MANAGER, McKINSEY & Co., SOUTH AFRICA

Acha is an Engagement Manager in McKinsey’s Johannesburg office.  He started his McKinsey career as a Summer Associate in the Johannesburg office in South Africa in 1998 and rejoined the Firm in Atlanta in August 1999.  He transferred back to Johannesburg in January 2002

Acha’s client work has been split between Africa and telecom; he has served his clients on issues of turn around strategies/operational improvements, new investment decisions, and business building.

Selected Africa Client Work

• Helping turn around one of the leading African airlines.  The goal of the project is to identify the overall size of the cost reduction and revenue enhancement opportunities, as well as a comprehensive review of the airline’s strategy

• Helped turn around the East African operations of a large oil and gas company.  The project focused predominantly on the Kenyan operations but also covered operations in Sudan, and included problem-solving support to all the initiatives, as well as development and implementation of a robust tracking methodology to ensure full value capture of the opportunity identified

• Assisted one of the large oil and gas companies identify $30m in cost savings and process improvement opportunities across North, West and East Africa.  This included all downstream operations in retail, commercial, and distribution, as well as cross-cutting processes such as procurement and trade debt management.  This was followed by the design and launch of a project office (including organization setup, tracking tools, and resourcing) responsible for monitoring and value-tracking of all projects across Africa

• Helped asses the business plan and organization for a leading African telecom and broadcasting regulator, and develop a management change agenda with key priority focus areas for the CEO

• Assisted one of the largest gold companies in redesigning its Corporate Centre to align it with the company’s strategy and ensure it is supported by best practice processes.  This included redesigning the organizational structure, developing robust talent management and performance management processes, and driving a performance culture centered around people and values throughout the organization

• Helped turn around one of the leading Banks in Nigeria.  The study involved building a new consumer credit business, implementing a new Bank-wide performance management system, streamlining the Bank’s operations, and transforming the Bank’s procurement processes

• Assisted a joint initiative of 5 pharmaceutical companies, UNAIDS, the World Bank, and the World Health Organization in increasing access to AIDS drugs in Africa.  The project, which focused on Uganda, helped the country develop a comprehensive response to its AIDS epidemic.  This was followed by a similar project in Botswana

• Assisted top management of a large South African Steel company in developing a long-term corporate strategy and restructuring its portfolio of assets

Additional Client Work

• Helped a leading technology player develop an alliance with a major wireless operator to provide data and m-commerce services to a target set of customers in the US

• Assisted a major consumer goods company in extending its brand into the mobile space and building a new branded and targeted mobile service offering

• Developed McKinsey’s perspective on the evolution of M-commerce protocols and architectures (including WAP and I-mode) and the impact of Bluetooth on the M-commerce value chain

• Helped a large private equity firm develop a new economy investment strategy across 3 sectors: broadband, media, and ASPs

• Assisted 2 US-based venture capitalists in determining potential broadband telecommunication investments across Europe

• Assisted a prominent LBO shop in deciding whether or not to invest $150MM in a national US CLEC

• Helped a US RBOC quantify and understand the root causes of its Cost of Quality and develop a phased approach to reduce these costs by 15%-20%

• Helped restructure a large US Telco to improve market focus and provide better sales coverage to its Business customers