Issam Darwish – Executive Vice Chairman/CEO, IHS GROUP
Issam Darwish is the Executive Vice Chairman and CEO of IHS Group. He co-founded IHS in 2001.
Issam has over 20 years’ experience in the telecommunications industry, including considerable experience of rolling out projects in challenging operating environments.
He has applied his leadership skills, technology insight and operational expertise to strengthen IHS’s culture of innovation alongside extending and expanding the company’s mobile tower portfolio and African reach. To date, IHS has built, managed and owned 8,250 tower sites. In addition, Issam led the company to list on the Nigerian Stock Exchange and was instrumental in raising a further $250 million in 2011.
Before joining IHS, Issam was the Deputy Managing Director of CELIA Motophone Ltd, Nigeria’s first GSM operator. He was responsible for setting budgets, recruitment, administration, project planning and implementation, procurement and contract negotiations. His achievements at CELIA include rolling out the GSM network to cover five cities within six months of joining the company.
Previously Issam was the Vice Chairman and Director of projects at Lintel, an international GSM operator. He was responsible for global project implementation in West Africa and Middle East. Issam also served as Network Manager for Libancell SAL, a Lebanese GSM operator.
Issam has a Bachelor’s Engineering Degree in Computer Communications from the American University of Beirut. He is a frequent speaker at industry and academic events.
In March 2014, Forbes Africa published an in-depth feature about his life and IHS’ success, click here to read the article.