“We’ve never really had a general manager that looks like the majority of our customers,” she tells The CEO Magazine. “For the first time, I look like not only the majority of our customers, but also the majority of our workforce.”
The challenges that both customers and employees face on a daily basis are also Qengqe’s own realities, she says.
“That means the way that I am likely to respond to their challenges isn’t just from an empathetic perspective, but it’s also from lived experience.”
Qengqe rose quickly through the quick service restaurant (QSR) industry; eight years ago, she was the Head of Convenience Retail – South Africa for Shell’s South African operations.
She joined Yum! Restaurants, the parent company of KFC Africa, in 2015 as Director for Africa Franchise Development and set about increasing the brand’s foothold across Sub-Saharan Africa.
Two years later, she was promoted to Director-Transformation and Diversity, allowing her to take the lead in developing a more inclusive KFC Africa.
“It was a time when we didn’t quite have an agenda as to how we were going to be a more inclusive organization, and I was offered the privilege to lead that work,” she explains.
With an ambition of becoming the world’s most inclusive QSR brand, gender inclusion was one of her biggest imperatives. Today 60 percent of head office employees are female; the figure is the same for restaurant managers.
She was appointed Chief People Officer in early 2020.
“My belief has always been that we need to be a KFC Africa that draws on African talent,” she says. “When I joined, our leadership team had no Africans. Today, it is 60 percent African.”
And, while Qengqe is the obvious poster child for the brand’s progress in DEI as the first female and first African General Manager for KFC Africa, there are numerous other initiatives underway that demonstrate how the brand is living up to its goal of being the world’s most inclusive QSR brand. This includes Kentucky Fried Pride, which promotes LGBTQIA+ inclusivity.
On a worldwide scale, the corporation describes her as a “fierce advocate” for gender equality and female empowerment, having developed a global Community of Belonging, Shine, a gender inclusion initiative that has been rolled out across all KFC business units.
