As group ICT Manager at Madison Group, Edward Tuitoek brings lessons from a career that spans telecoms, healthcare, and manufacturing. Known for his pragmatic approach and people-centered leadership, he continues to push for technology that drives both efficiency and impact.
Edward Tuitoek likes to joke that his IT career began not in a data centre, but in a fast-food kitchen.
“I started by selling chips and chicken at Steers way back. I was the IT manager there, more like systems admin really, because there weren't any structures and I was reporting to no one. We were doing basic support stuff,” he says with a laugh.
That modest start set him on a path across telecoms, healthcare, manufacturing and now insurance. Looking back, Edward admits it was never a straight line.
“I wasn’t trained as an IT person. I graduated as an electrical engineer, but after my first internship in telecoms, I found tech much more interesting than electrical. Things kept changing, you always had to learn something new. With electrical, power will always be equal to voltage multiplied by current,” he says.
Joining the tech world
The allure of fast-moving technology drew him in. After Steers, he joined Wananchi Group during the excitement of Kenya’s fibre rollout.
“It was the right place to be, though being the IT guy among IT guys was tough. Everyone was a techie, everyone could crack things, so managing people there was no small job,” he quips.
A friend later nudged him into healthcare through a World Bank–funded project that set up laboratories across East Africa.
“I didn’t know I was going to spend the next 10 years in healthcare, but it was one of the most impactful experiences. We built labs, set up e-learning platforms for nurses, and even rolled out cross-border disease surveillance systems. Rwanda really embraced it, training tens of thousands of healthcare workers,” he recalls.
From there, he crossed the road, literally, into Nairobi Hospital, where he spent seven years and rose to head ICT.
“When I joined, we had about 1,400 users and by the time I left, we were at 2,600. We scaled infrastructure, implemented ERPs, radiology systems, hospital management systems, you name it. My phone would ring a hundred times a day, but building the right team made all the difference,” he says.
A leap into insurance
After a decade in healthcare, Edward switched to manufacturing, where he found the impact of tech even greater.
“Tech has more impact in manufacturing than healthcare, at least in our context. You could see how it improved processes end to end,” he says.
That stint was followed by a move into insurance, where he is now group ICT manager at Madison.
Insurance, he says, has been a fascinating new frontier.
“Many of the big systems are expensive and not tailored for our market, so you find yourself customising or even building from scratch. It’s quite involving but also exciting because it forces you to innovate,” he explains
AI for the win
Looking ahead, Edward is eyeing AI adoption in 2026 but with caution.
“If your data is messy, AI will just amplify the mess. That’s why we’re focused on building a proper data warehouse first,” he reveals
On cybersecurity, he is convinced that integration and AI-driven tools are the way forward.
“Otherwise, you drown in alerts that all look the same before you even start. Bots and AI can already do this better,” he notes.
The other side of Edward
Despite the heavy demands of tech leadership, Edward makes time for football, motorsport and family travel.
“We play football with friends, travel twice a year as a group, and I’m even trying to get my head into golf. It needs patience, but I’ll get there,” he says with a smile.
Asked what he would be doing if not in tech, his answer comes quickly.
“Definitely still engineering. I like to fix stuff, so one way or another I would have found myself there,” he says.
