Darlington Mandivenga

Darlington Mandivenga is a Zimbabwean business executive and current Group CEO of Cassava, an Econet Wireless group company. He is known mostly for working in various managerial and influential positions at Econet Wireless.

Educational Background

Mandivenga holds a masters in Business Administration, a masters in Leadership and Management and a Bachelor of Technology degree.^[1]

Career at Econet

Prior to this position as CEO of Econet Services, he served the group in senior executive positions, including CMO and CEO in markets like Nigeria, Burundi and Kenya. Having joined Econet in 1998, as the first brand manager for the company, Mandivenga was transferred to Nigeria in 2001 as part of the executive team that set up and launched Econet Wireless Nigeria.^[1]

He was also CEO of Econet Services in Zimbabwe from about 2013 to 2015.

Involvement in Alleged Stolen Business Concept

Mandivenga together with Fungayi Mandivheyi and Francis Mwale were alleged to have been part of the correspondence team that stole Ignatius Munengwas panic button business concept.It was reported the summones read;

The parties [Munengwa and Econet top brass] reached an oral agreement in terms of which the plaintiff [Munengwa] would disclose the full details of the panic button service to the defendant [Econet Wireless] and in the event that the project was implemented jointly, the parties would share the proceeds on a 60:40 ratio, with defendant getting 60% and the plaintiff getting 40% of the proceeds. Francis Mwale represented defendant at the material time,
"… the parties later were in discussion from 2012 to 2014 and a lot of plaintiff's proprietary information was disclosed to defendant. In breach of the oral agreement to jointly work on the project, the defendant proceeded to launch its connected home service, incorporating the panic button service in 2015 without the consent or authority of the plaintiff,"
"Plaintiff acted in the belief that defendant was bound by the non-disclosure agreement and that defendant would not circumvent plaintiff in the implementation of the project. The defendant, after inducing the disclosure by the plaintiff, further misrepresented through its chief commercial officer, Stanley Henning and other high-ranking officers, like Mandivenga, that it was not going to implement the project because it was not within the scope of projects of financial year 2015 and 2016,"
Defendant then dishonestly and with intent to prejudice the plaintiff went on to incorporate the panic button innovation in its connected home service which it launched in 2015.
"The fraudulent incorporation of plaintiff's innovation in defendant's service caused the plaintiff to suffer
$870 375 financial prejudices because the innovation had a commercial value, and defendant had, through one Brighton from the finance team, accepted the financial projections tendered by plaintiff.^[2]