Country Head - Biscuits

Country Head - Biscuits

Location: East Africa

Experience: 12 to 20 Years

Reporting to: Group Business Head

Function: Sales and Business Operations

Role Overview:

The Country Head will lead the Biscuits business across East Africa with full P&L ownership, focused on creams, cookies, and wafers. This senior leadership role is responsible for driving growth, strengthening market presence, and ensuring execution excellence across sales, distribution, and operations. The incumbent will build a strong regional organization and deliver sustainable, profitable growth aligned with group and regional objectives.

Key Responsibilities:

- Business Leadership and Strategy: Provide overall leadership for the biscuits business in East Africa. Develop and execute annual business plans, budgets, and growth strategies for creams, cookies, and wafers. Drive revenue growth, margin expansion, and cost discipline while ensuring governance and compliance.

- Sales, Distribution, and Market Expansion: Lead sales across general trade, modern trade, distributors, wholesalers, and institutional channels. Expand numeric and weighted distribution, improve outlet penetration, and strengthen availability and visibility of biscuit products. Identify new markets, channels, and partnerships to scale the business.

- Route to Market and Execution Excellence: Design and optimize route to market models aligned with local trade dynamics across East African markets. Ensure strong execution of pricing, promotions, trade schemes, and in store activation for biscuit categories. Monitor distributor productivity, ROI, inventory management, and service levels.

- Brand, Category, and Portfolio Development: Work closely with marketing teams to build strong biscuit brands across creams, cookies, and wafers. Support portfolio expansion, innovation, and new product launches. Ensure effective translation of consumer insights and regional brand strategies into on ground execution.

- Financial Management and Controls: Own country or regional P&L including revenue, margins, operating costs, and working capital. Drive accurate forecasting, sales planning, and financial reporting. Ensure adherence to internal controls, statutory requirements, and company policies.

- People Leadership and Capability Building: Build, lead, and mentor a high performance leadership team across sales, distribution, and support functions. Drive a performance driven culture through clear KPIs, reviews, and capability development. Ensure succession planning and talent retention.

- Stakeholder and External Management: Develop strong relationships with distributors, key customers, suppliers, and regulatory authorities across East Africa. Represent the business externally and strengthen its position as a leading biscuits player in the region.

Education and Experience :

- Graduate degree in Business Administration, Marketing, or a related discipline. MBA or equivalent postgraduate qualification preferred.

- 15 to 20 years of progressive FMCG experience with a strong background in biscuits, specifically creams, cookies, and wafers. Proven track record of leading country or regional businesses with full P&L responsibility. Strong exposure to East African or other emerging markets is highly desirable.

- Deep understanding of biscuit category dynamics and FMCG sales and distribution systems.

- Proven leadership and people management capability.

- Strong financial planning and analytical skills.

- Ability to operate effectively in complex and evolving markets. Excellent communication, negotiation, and stakeholder management skills.

- Results oriented, hands on, and execution focused.