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ROSE MUNENE
GROUP CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER AIRKENYA GROUP
From auditing in Washington, DC, to leading finance across a three-airline East African group, Rose Munene has built a career defined by disciplined decision-making, operational responsibility and a no-nonsense approach to change.
Rose Munene’s job runs from the balance sheet to the airstrip. As Group Chief Financial Officer of AirKenya Group, she leads finance and IT across the Group’s operations in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, as well as administration in Kenya.
In aviation, a decision made in the back office can determine whether an aircraft is ready, a schedule holds and a traveller reaches the Mara in time for lunch. Rose has spent more than 20 years learning to get decisions like these right, first in the United States and then across Africa.
Built on audit
Rose began her career at Ernst & Young in Washington, DC, rising to Senior Audit Manager. It was an experience that made her sceptical – about risk, about controls and about whether the information behind a decision could truly be trusted.
“Audit teaches you to ask the uncomfortable question early,” she says. “I still do that. The difference now is that I ask it of my own plans first, before asking anyone else to back them.”
She holds a Master of Science in Accounting from the University of Virginia and a Bachelor of Business Administration from Bowie State University, and is a licensed Certified Public Accountant in Virginia.
Coming home
After years of building her career in the United States, it was family that brought her back to East Africa. “DC had been good to me,” she says. “But there comes a point when you realise the milestones that matter most aren’t on a career plan. I wanted to be close to my family – and I have never regretted it.”
Back in the region, she went on to senior roles at two multinationals with significant African operations. At Airtel Africa, she served as the Internal Assurance Regional Head for Africa. At British American Tobacco, her career broadened across audit, strategy and finance, including leadership roles in audit and strategy for East and Central Africa, senior management in commercial finance, and, ultimately, Financial Controller for Kenya, with responsibility for corporate finance across East Africa.
These roles marked a shift from reviewing decisions to shaping them. She later led the finance function at Van Woustraat Trust before joining AirKenya Group, where her responsibilities expanded to include financial strategy and operational support.
Three countries, one Group
AirKenya has been part of East Africa’s safari story since the 1970s, and today the Group flies travellers across Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Rose oversees financial strategy and capital management across the three countries, in a business where safety comes first, costs are high and demand rises and falls with tourism.
It is a role that draws on everything that came before. At Airtel Africa and British American Tobacco, she worked across several African markets, each with its own regulators, currencies and ways of doing business. Audit gave her the controls while those years gave her the regional judgement. Her approach starts with people. “The talent was already there,” she says. “The opportunity was to make good teams stronger together.”
Because her remit also includes IT and administration, Rose assesses investment through both financial and operational lenses: does it create value, and can the underlying work be done better? The strongest answers are often practical rather than glamorous – a faster process, earlier access to the right information, or the removal of a repetitive task.
AI on a Tuesday afternoon
Rose measures artificial intelligence by whether it gives people back time. In finance, the right tools can cut the hours spent assembling reports and leave more time to understand what the numbers are saying. Across the business, she sees further potential for AI to help teams review large volumes of information, identify patterns earlier and focus human experience and judgement where they matter most.
“I’m less interested in what AI can do on a slide than what it does on a Tuesday afternoon,” she says. “If it takes a tedious task off someone’s desk, that’s a real win. The judgement still has to come from people.”
Opening doors for others
Rose serves on the board of KenSAP, the Kenya Scholar-Access Program, which helps academically talented Kenyan students gain admission to leading universities in North America – a path that echoes her own US education.
She also sits on the board of Impact Hub Nairobi, which helps entrepreneurs, farmers and startups turn promising ideas into businesses that investors will back.
Beyond the accounts
Accurate accounts are only the starting point. What matters to Rose is what finance does with them.
“I don’t want finance to be the department people try to get past,” she says. “I want it to be the one they come to first when they have a good idea.”
