Seasoned public sector executive Lulama Mbobo-Vava stepped in as interim CEO at the ECDC last week.
She will hold the fort while the SOE navigates a dispute with suspended CEO Ayanda Wakaba over alleged mismanagement of a R100m economic development fund from the national Treasury.
Mbobo-Vava will continue to manage her corporate services portfolio though, a position she has held since joining the ECDC in East London almost two years ago.
After a career of over 30 years in the public service at national and provincial level, she returned to her home province to offer her strengths in strategic leadership, organisational design, ICT strategic management, supply chain management, risk and integrity management, stakeholder engagement, and change management.
Prior to the ECDC, she was deputy DG of corporate services in the national higher education & training department for 13 years.
In this role, she provided strategic oversight across a broad portfolio, playing a critical role in shaping national policy and administrative frameworks.
Before that, in a top HR post in the KZN education department from 2006 to 2010, she managed a workforce of over 100,000 in a province where the education infrastructure spanned 12 district offices.
She was selected for the prestigious Senior Executive Programme for Africa, a leadership programme offered jointly by Harvard Business School and the Gordon Institute of Business Science at the University of Pretoria.
Comfortable in seven of SA’s 12 official languages, Mbobo-Vava has a master’s degree in psychology specialising in statistics.
But her passion for public policy and development has taken another, rather surprising turn — epidemiology, the study of disease patterns in a population.
“I was very fortunate to be selected to spend time in Atlanta, USA, for training at its disease control centre,” she said.
While her time at ECDC’s helm may be limited, she is interested in the SOE’s property portfolio, adding she would like to see more investment in properties that will increase the entity’s income from its rental component.
“We must diversify and smarten up the rental properties,” she added.
She hails from Sterkspruit, a rural town in the north-western region of the Eastern Cape near the Free State and Lesotho borders.
Daily Dispatch
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