Wednesday, 26 April 2023 – Attacq Limited (“Attacq”), the JSE-listed REIT developing Waterfall City, is proud to announce that its CEO, Jackie Van Niekerk, has been named on the prestigious Africa.com 2023 Definitive List of Women CEOs. She is ranked among other exceptional African female leaders in major corporations across the continent.
S&P Global’s “Women CEOs: Leadership for a Diverse Future” 2022 research found that “women are still significantly underrepresented as CEOs globally, but slightly increased their share to 5.4% in 2022, compared with 5% in 2021. Both the real estate and health care sectors continue to lead with larger percentages of women CEOs”. In a recent podcast with S&P Global, Jackie noted the importance of empowerment and creating environments for women to succeed.
Bringing the lens to Africa, a Harvard Business Review highlighted the startling need for more diversity among CEOs of big businesses. To be the CEO of a large, listed company in Africa is an extreme rarity for women; therefore, recognising them is important. Research by Harvard Business School identifies one important factor that all women who reach the CEO spot have in common: resilience.
Jackie took on the CEO role immediately before the COVID-19 pandemic, an uncertain time that required resilience, especially in Africa. During and through this turbulent period, she led Attacq with distinction, demonstrating her extensive knowledge and expertise within the property industry.
To mark the evolution of Africa.com’s Definitive List of Women CEOs, now in its third year, Africa.com researched and analysed 2,020 listed companies on Africa’s 24 stock exchanges. The companies were screened for revenue of $100 million or more or a market cap of $150 million or more, which yielded a list of 787 companies. The public websites of these 787 companies were examined to determine those women with the title of chief executive officer, managing director, or president and to confirm that these executives have a bottom line, profit and loss responsibility.