Management

Thomas Sonesson, CEO, Reime Group

Thomas is the CEO of Reime Group and operates out of the Group Head Office in Nairobi. He holds a Masters Degree in Engineering and also served the Swedish Army for 3 years. He has strong business acumen and is a results-oriented leader with 21 years of experience in the global telecom space. Swedish by nationality, Thomas has worked extensively in the African continent for over 13 years. He last held the responsibility of Head - Operation Efficiency at Ericsson AB, Sweden. Prior to which he was Ericsson Country Head - East Africa and COO for Ericsson Sub Saharan Africa. From 1997-2007 Thomas was based in South Africa and managed Ericsson business in several Countries in Southern Africa - Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi etc.) From the functional perspective, he has worked for and managed functions like Managed Services, Customer Solutions, Sales, Operations, Procurement, and Customer Service & General Management in Sub Saharan Africa for Ericsson.

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Zarko Petkovic is the Head of Operations - Reime Group

Zarko haeds the operations function on Reime Group. He is a qualified Electrical & Electronic engineer with the membership of the Institute of Electrical Engineers, England. He holds a BSc. Honours Degree in Electrical & Electronic Engineering from the University of Surrey, Guilford, England. He was awarded the title of Chartered Engineer (C. Eng) by the institution’s Engineering Council in 1991 with registration number 424314.  Before joining Reime, he had worked with several telecommunications giants such as Ericsson, Siemens N.V, GTE Nigeria, Eastern Telecommunications limited, Standard Telecommunications Laboratories where he has held senior managerial positions.  Zarko has 30 years of experience in the telecommunications industry. He is very conversant with both Anglophone and Francophone Africa having acquired a large part of his rich experience working for companies based in Africa i.e. Nigeria, Benin, Tanzania, Kenya, Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana

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Deepak Garnaik, Head – Human Resources,  Reime Group

Deepak is responsible for the overall function of Human Resources of Reime, based out of Group Head Office at Nairobi, Kenya and reports to the CEO. He is a Law Graduate with a Post Graduate Diploma in Personnel Management from Xavier’s Institute, Ranchi. Deepak is an HR leader with over 28 years of experience in the Oil and Gas/ Energy sector and  has worked extensively in areas of Human Resources Strategy and Management, Expatriate HR issues, Facilities & Estate Management, Industrial Relations and Organizational Development across Asia & Africa. He last held the position of AVP/Head - Human Resources & Administration at Indorama Eleme Petrochemicals Company Limited, Port Harcourt Nigeria. He has worked with GAIL India Ltd and Indian Oil Corporation (Bongaigaon Refinery) in India earlier in his career. His areas of professional strength are HR Strategy, HR Management, Employee Relations and handling Expatriate HR issues.

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Walters De Kock Uys, Head of Sales and Acting Country Head for Reime Zambia

Walter is repsonsible for the sales acitivities of the Reime Group and is based out of the Group Head office at Nairobi. He holds a diploma in Professional Project Management as well as in High Frequency Technology. Furthermore he holds a degree in High Frequency Technology and is currently completing his research project based on corporate strategy for his Masters in Business Leadership.

Walter brings with him 18 years of Sales and Business development experience in the African Telecom sector, having worked extensively in Africa, developing and unlocking business opportunities and creating profitable projects with Operators, Large Enterprises and ISP’s. He has held various senior positions in his career. Among the companies he worked for includes Grintek Telecom, Q-Kon, MWEB Nigeria, Dizengoff (W.A) Nigeria, Battery Technologies Limited Nigeria and Likusasa Africa Limited.

He is a highly motivated person with experience in strategic management with areas of professional strengths being Sales, Marketing, Business Development and Strategy in the Telecommunications industry.

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R Sampath, Acting CFO, Reime Group

R. Sampath is the CFO of ACME Telepower Limited, India – the ultimate holding company of Reime Group. He is a Commerce Graduate and a Chartered Accountant and Cost Accountant from Indian Institutes.  He brings with him more than 30 years of work experience with organizations like UTC-Carrier, Samtel Group and Moser Baer. 

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Kashif Shaikh, Regional Head – Reime Kenya Region

In addition to his role as MD-Reime, Kenya Kashif is the Regional Head for Kenya Region and also looks after the new projects in Zambia, Malawi & Madagascar. An Electrical Engineer by qualification, he has a vast experience, of over 20 years, in handling power and related projects in Africa while he was with ABB. He made a shift to the telecom sector a decade ago. At present he is the Reime KAM for Airtel Africa and is responsible for establishing Reime’s operations in Zambia, Malawi and Madagascar. He is instrumental in closing most of the current Airtel deals. The areas of his strength is strong Project Management and Co-ordination skills.

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Purushothaman Ponnenkandy, Regional Head – Reime Nigeria

Ponnenkandy is MD of  RWA and heads the Nigeria Region. He is an Economics Graduate with 24 years of Active Military Service as an Infantry Officer (Lt Col / Indian Army). He has an outstanding trackrecord and has managed various assignments like Operations, Logistics, Administrative and HRM in the Army as well as the United Nations Peace Missions. Prior to joining Reime, he worked as the first Circle Head of ROTN for ACME-TSP where he established necessary frame-work to launch business in Tamilnadu as a Total Solution Provider (TSP) in Telecom Sector.

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Yunus Yangin, Regional Head – Reime Tanzania Region

Yunus heads the Reime operations in Tanzania Region. He is a Civil Engineering Graduate from Türkiye and has advanced project management skills, he leads multi skilled teams through numerous telecom roll out, upgrade and maintenance projects, including sub-terrain areas. He has excellent skills in Commercial aspects and pricing, sales, financing, SCM, logistics and operations management. He has proven and reliable technical skills: trained and registered graduate Civil engineer with over 15 years in active practice. Prior to taking over as country manager, Yunus worked as a site supervisor and then as an Operations Manager with Reime Kenya Ltd for 7 years and gained huge experience in telecom industry. Yunus attended Specialized training and gained knowledge in telecom infrastructure management and projects during his career, some of the prominent ones being - High Safety Climbing Certificate, Andrew Connecters & MW Installation Certificate, GVF VSAT Installation & Maintenance Course, ERICSSON GSM RBS 2106/ 2107 Installation, PROMANIS/PROMASYS project management tool. Earlier he worked for Antensan International GmBH, Yenice Turizm & Construction Ltd, 3.2.1. Construction Ltd. in the role of Assistant Project Manager and Construction Manager.

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Jonathan Muwonge, Regional Head, Reime Uganda Region

Jonathan heads the Reime’s operations in Uganda Region and is responsible for the day to day management of the company and business development. Jonathan Muwonge has 10 years of telecom industry experience. He holds a bachelors degree in Electrical engineering from Makerere University and Masters in Communications Management from Coventry University. Prior to this he was Corporate Strategy Analyst at Uganda. He worked as part of the due diligence team that eventually led to the acquisition of majority shareholding in Uganda Telecom by LAP Green. 

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Ayman Fekry, Regioanl Head, Reime DRC & Congo B

Ayman heads the Reime’s operations in DRC and Congo B Region. He is Egyptian by nationality and holds B.sc degree in telecommunication & electronics from Ain Shams university - Egypt , Diploma in project Management from the American University in Cairo. He is also a certified Project Manager C- IPMA from the international project management association , Zurich’s chapter Germany. He brings with him over 12 years of experience in Business development , subsidiaries establishment, operation and general management across Africa.

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