Matshela Koko Biography
Matshela Koko is the former Eskom Holdings Group Chief Executive (GCE)), overseeing a State-owned organization of over 40 000 employees, responsible for providing over 95% of electricity to South Africa and approximately 45% of the electricity used in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region.
His 20 year career in Eskom began at an early age, where in 1996 (as a young graduate fresh out of university), he joined the organization as an Engineer-in-Training, stationed at Duvha Power Station. A year later, he was appointed as a Systems Engineer, specializing in Hydrogen and Water Treatment Plants, where amongst other things, he was closely involved in the commissioning of the Cooling Water Treatment plant at Majuba Power Station. Having spent two years in this role, in 1999, he was promoted to the position of Process Engineer /Senior Engineer. A year later in 2000, he was again promoted, to the position of Boiler Plant Engineering Manager & Pressure Parts Engineer, at Duvha Power Station, where as the custodian of the boiler plant, he managed a multi-disciplinary team of engineers and Senior Engineers and was accountable for the reliability, availability and efficiency of six boiler plant units, each boiler having the Maximum Continuous Rating of 507kg/hr. His success in this role saw him appointed to the position of Senior Boiler Consultant at Duvha Power Station where he spent 3 years spe a Boad Member of VGB Powertech cializing on long term plant issues.
In 2004 he was promoted to the position of Senior Manager – Power Plant Engineering, Enterprises Division where he remained for almost four years before being appointed to Senior General Manager, Engineering, Generation Division in 2009. Of note to mention is that during this time, he was also the Chairman of the Asset Creation Programmes Committee and a Member of the R300 million Procurement Committee and the Generation Business Safety and Assurance Committee. His contributions to field of Engineering were also internationally recognized; he was appointed as Chairman of VGB Power Plant Concepts and a Member of the European Committee of Standardisation and had presented numerous papers internationally.
Matshela Koko
In 2010 he was tasked to head up the Technology Group and was appointed as the Divisional Executive for Group Technology, responsible for all engineering requirements across the vast Eskom business. In 2014, the Technology Group merged with the Commercial Division and he was appointed as the Group Executive for Technology and Commercial. Added to his portfolio, was Eskom Rotek industries (ERI) which is responsible for maintenance of Eskom’s core assets and construction of new fixed assets.
On an international level, in 2013 he was appointed Board Member of PowerGen Africa and in 2014, he was appointed as a Boad Member of VGB Powertec. During this period, he was also appointed as Chair of the Eskom Power Plant Institute.
In October 2015 the Generation Division and Group Technology were consolidated into one group which Matshela was tasked to lead as the Group Executive for Generation & Technology. The Generation Division is the custodian of Eskom’s electricity generating assets and currently maintains and operates 24 power stations, with a total installed capacity of 45 247MW, comprising coal-fired stations, nuclear power, open cycle gas turbines, hydro and pumped storage stations. In this role, Matshela was tasked with leading the turnaround strategy of the technical performance of the Eskom generation fleet and ensuring effective implementation of the risk based engineering support while simultaneously leading the Technology Division (responsible for engineering designs and support for the line functions). Since his appointment in this role, the generation plant performance has improved significantly as evident from the increase in the energy availability factor from 70% in October 2015 to 77.7% year to date, November 2016. This improvement is the reason that no load shedding has occurred for almost 15 months.
In December 2016, Matshela was tasked with leading Eskom in the role of Interim Group Chief Executive, a position he held up to 16 February 2018.
Matshela Koko Qualifications
Matshela Koko joined Eskom as a young graduate fresh out of university