Ralph Tendai Mupita – Racism Stopped him from Pursuing his Chosen Career

Ralph Tendai Mupita 

By Tapfuma Machakaire   01/11/22

Early childhood development (ECD) and the first few years of primary education are designed for elementary learning and rarely do children at that stage get to choose a career path. This is despite that teachers and parents always encourage kids to aim high.Children are often asked to recite the career of their choice even when they are still very young.

But due to lack of exposure and limited opportunities available for blacks before the attainment of independence in 1980, most black children would admire common professions like teaching, nursing, doctor, a soldier or a policeman.

Few exceptions like Ralph Mupita would in the 1970’s say “when I grow up I want to go to the moon.”

Mupita was born three years after American astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong had become the first people to walk on the Moon on 20 July 1969 and he must have been a very intelligent child to follow the story and wish to emulate the two.

He says before he was even 10, he had chosen to become an astronaut, but his dream would be shattered when he was told that there was no room for Africans to pursue such a career.

In an interview captured on YouTube Mupita says, “My dream career was to go to the moon. I wanted to be an astronaut. But sometime when I was about ten or eleven years old, someone told me that Africans don’t go to the moon’. It was hard to listen to that person but I did and here I am today.”

Although he could not go to the moon, Mupita never stopped dreaming big. He says his parents always encouraged him to be ambitious and aspire for greatness.

Mupita is now the President and Chief Executive Officer of Africa’s largest mobile telecommunications operator, MTN Group Ltd. MTN whose headquarters is in South Africa has branches in 19 countries with 280million global subscribers. Of these about 50million are using the MTN mobile money services.

Ralph Tendai Mupitawas born in Zimbabwe in 1972. He attended Mutare Junior School and went to Churchill High and Plumtree High for his secondary education

He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering and a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Cape Town. He is a member of the Graduate Management Programme with Harvard University.

After his first degree, Mupita worked as staff civil engineer at Haw & Inglis Civil Engineering, in Cape Town from 1996 to 1999.

In January 2001, he joined Old Mutual South Africa where he served as Director of Strategy and later as Director of Retail for High Net-worth and Affluent.

In 2012, he was appointed the company’s chief executive officer Emerging Markets In 2017. Mupita joined MTN as the Group’s chief financial officer before being appointed group president and chief executive in September 2020.

In his position as MTN Chief Financial Officer (CFO), he received four awards for his outstanding work. In 2019, he won the award for South Africa’s CFO of the Year.

Mupita says as a beneficiary of great maths and science teaching at primary and secondary school he is passionate about promoting the study of math and science. “Great maths and science education will be crucial to our country being competitive in a global context.”

Mupita is a strong believer in collective business leadership “As a country, we need collective leadership from business, government and civil society. I think we need to get on and do it now. We need the action orientation required to make us a great nation.”

At the height of the COVI-19 pandemic the MTN Group supported the African Union’s vaccination programme with US$ 25million towards securing about seven million doses of vaccines for health workers across the continent.

He said the donation was part of the firm’s resolve to support governments’ efforts in flattening the curve of the pandemic for a healthy Africa.

Mupita is  married to Makole Mupita, a chartered accountant and corporate finance professional who also worked for Old Mutual before establishing her own company Mahlako A Phahla Investments (Pty) Ltd) in 2009. Mupita attributes most of his career accomplishments to his wife, saying “Makole is a real partner for me. I probably won’t be where I am today without her.”

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