Vodacom Tanzania finance director Hilda Bujiku made history as the telco’s first native Tanzanian and woman to hold the position. But behind the public triumphs is a hard-won battle with self-doubt. With renewed confidence and a track record of transformation, she is ready for what comes next.
The first time Hilda Bujiku played golf, the ball veered straight into a cluster of adjacent bushes. She had bought the right gear and was eager to connect with fellow players on the course, but when it was time to play, she stalled.
“The self-talk came in when I was at the golf course. The perfectionism in me wants to show that I’m good, so I keep learning and avoid playing with people. Then one morning, I saw an experienced golf player hitting the balls into the bush. And I thought, what’s wrong with me? We women want to be perfect, to connect, but not look like we’re trying too hard,” she said.
The noises, as Hilda calls them, have been a constant battle. As a child, she yearned to be a pilot but later dropped the idea when she realised she had a fear of flying. She toyed briefly with the thought of studying economics but opted for accounting because it seemed more practical. This opened doors quickly and landed her a role at EY. But things finally clicked into place when she audited a telco.
“I was a junior auditor at the time, and I thought to myself this is my home. I think I want to be in the telco industry. So, I thought about it and realised my passion lies in the tech stuff,” she explained.
The pace and complexity of the telco industry appealed to Hilda’s love for systems. She accepted a role at Millicom (then Tigo), which promised a change of rhythm, but the appointment came when she was 20 weeks pregnant. When she returned from maternity leave, she had a renewed urge to prove herself.
“Nobody told me that I needed to prove myself. It was me and the noises in my head. So I worked there for six years. Proving and proving and proving. Nobody told me to prove myself. It was me and my ambition,” she added.
A new challenge
In 2012, Vodacom Tanzania came calling. The move was bittersweet, as she had to leave a team she had been deeply connected to. Two years in, she was asked to act as finance director and after eight months, her boss approached her with a new challenge.
“It was exciting but at the same time scary. I think I wasn’t ready psychologically. Things were moving, but I was doubting myself. One of my bosses said: Hilda, you have a rubber-band character. I can stretch you as much as possible and you never break,” she recalled.
While Hilda’s response was that she would break, her boss was adamant that she could be stretched without reaching that point.
The challenge was to build a finance business partnering division from the ground up, with the aim of putting finance at the heart of commercial and investment decisions. This meant shifting the company culture and gaining trust across different teams. Inevitably, it took time to get people on board.
“We were a new unit inside finance that no one understood. People would ask who I was to shape commercial and investment decisions. I had to explain that I wasn’t there to police them or add layers but to work together to shape decisions,” she said.
Pumping new energy
Today Hilda leads a team of 60. Her scope includes supply chain, margin assurance, financial planning & analysis, investor relations, finance business partnering, company secretariat, business excellence and finance operations. Many of her direct reports have been at Vodacom for over 10 years, developing the closeness of a family.
“We do have a shared vision together. We trust each other. We are family before we are colleagues. We win together and lose together,” she says.
When she became finance director in 2022, Vodacom Tanzania had reported losses for two consecutive years. Her first order of business was working with the leadership team to rethink the turnaround strategy. The company’s return to profit in the financial year 2023 brought a renewed energy.
“We announced results for the financial year 2025 and reported good growth in both topline, profitability measures and sustained a very good balance sheet. It has been three years of profit growth and paying dividends to our shareholders. Importantly, continuing to deliver on our purpose – empowering people, maintaining trust and protecting the planet,” she noted.
Since her appointment, Hilda has successfully steered the financial performance of Vodacom Tanzania, one milestone among many. The weight of her position as Vodacom’s first female and Tanzanian finance director is not lost on her. During her time as acting managing director, her team worked behind the scenes to protect her time and focus, ensuring she showed up strong. Their commitment made a deep impression on her.
The battle with self-doubt
“My team felt the pressure even more than I did. They were praying nothing went wrong while I was acting MD. I remember a day before the 5G launch, they were worried that the launch wouldn’t go as planned or that the hologram would fail to work as envisioned. All they wanted was a successful launch of the first 5G in Tanzania, by the first female local finance director who was acting managing director. That’s what a strong team does. And feel I have an obligation to make them proud,” she explained.
Hilda makes a special effort to mentor women across the organisation, as she often recognises in them the same doubts she has battled. She encourages them to speak up during meetings, gently nudging them when they feel unsure. It is a feeling she knows intimately, as she would let others speak on her behalf even when she had done the work for years.
“I used to sit through meetings and say nothing, then go home and reflect. But it was just my own noise. Now I teach myself to catch it. I’ll be on Microsoft Teams, telling them to say something. Then on WhatsApp. And then when we get out of that meeting I ask how they did in that meeting – they begin to realise they’re blocking their own progress,” she revealed.
In November 2025, Hilda’s leadership was recognised when she won the High-Performance Team award at the inaugural CFO Awards for East Africa.
“It is not only a personal achievement, but rather it is a reflection of the dedicated teams, visionary leadership, as well as the support that my colleagues at exco back in Tanzania give me and make my work easy,” she said.
Her routine – golf and working out four or five times a week – helps clear her mind and introduces her to peers across different industries. These activities give her balance and space to breathe. Slowly, Hilda is learning to enjoy life without overthinking.
“I’m not a professional golfer. So, I’ll play for fun and laugh at myself. And that’s my joy.”
