Paul went from engineering to managing teams at service providers to ultimately defining his own role at ICEA LION. His greatest challenge and greatest privilege is growing the next generation of IT leaders.
Paul Kioi, the head of technology and transformation at the ICEA LION Group, was determined to become an engineer, but life, telecommunications and the internet intervened, and Paul found himself on a different path – managing people who deliver services, which has turned out to be his greatest challenge and his greatest privilege.
Paul’s career path began with a clear vision: to be an engineer. Trained in the field, he initially envisioned a career working with machines in a white coat. “I was very clear on what I wanted to do from early on.”
His early experiences involved “hardcore telecommunications working with telecom then installing and commissioning Private Branch Exchanges (PBXs)”. However, the emergence of the internet and personal computers led to a significant shift. He transitioned into the PC industry, managing teams implementing systems like Windows servers within service providers.
“I transitioned to computers because at that point there was an interface between the Internet and PCs, which was going through the telecom network. So I found myself joining the PC industry and that was the end of my engineering plan,” Paul recalls. “I found myself managing teams who were implementing systems. My career grew into working with service providers, and the people providing those services on the part of those companies. My engineering background provided a strong foundation, but the convergence of telecommunications and computing opened up a whole new world.”
He also chose to move into the corporate sector, driven by a desire for stability. This led him to roles as a system administrator and eventually a group head of IT for a diverse financial group encompassing insurance, banking, agriculture, manufacturing, and medical entities. In this strategic role, Paul focused on group-wide initiatives such as cybersecurity, licensing, and IT standards and strategy.
Embracing digital transformation
Paul says that an opportunity then arose within ICEA LION in 2020, following a shareholding consolidation and structuring, that necessitated a supporting digital transformation. Keen to get the job done effectively, especially after prior attempts with an operating model of a separate growth and innovation centre led innovation had faced challenges, Paul proactively proposed a restructuring of the IT leadership within the insurance company to eliminate silos and segregate digital transformation from IT operations.
“Recognising the need for a cohesive digital strategy, I took the initiative to propose and ultimately create my current role,” he says. Since 2021, he has been at the forefront of this transformation.
As for his current priorities, Paul emphasises the necessity for ICEA LION to “transform our products and our services to meet the modern-day customers”.
Talent is key
Moving on to broader challenges and opportunities in East Africa for IT leaders, Paul identifies talent acquisition and retention as a significant hurdle.
“We don't have great and affordable talent in the market when it comes to some of the tasks like digital enterprise solutions architecture,” he says. “Retaining skills is becoming very difficult especially for an incumbent company like us with a structure that’s very hierarchical. It becomes difficult to retain staff who want to move from one department to another or to do different roles.”
Internally, Paul says, legacy systems pose a “huge, huge problem”, along with a reliance on expensive, familiar technologies over options like open source. Kioi also highlighted a significant challenge in mindset within incumbent companies, noting a resistance to change, a focus on internal processes over customer needs, and complex decision-making structures. Furthermore, he says data completeness and accuracy are major concerns for their platforms.
Despite these challenges, Kioi expresses genuine enthusiasm for certain aspects of his role. “Mentoring young developers and guiding their career choices is something I find incredibly rewarding,” he says. He also enjoys the strategic level of enterprise architecture, particularly “creating frameworks that the business will be able to make decisions on”, such as determining product profitability. On the other hand, he candidly admits that “the worst part is meetings”.
The great outdoors
Outside of work, Kioi finds relaxation in nature. He is an avid hiker and mountain climber, having summited Mount Kilimanjaro twice and Mount Kenya once. He is also passionate about environmental restoration, dedicating time to planting indigenous trees on a small farm with the goal of preserving lost species and encouraging biodiversity. He noted the surprising return of various bird species as a result of his and his neighbour’s efforts in an area that was once wilderness.
