You Can't Sit On A Board if You're Under 40?

Recently I saw a director placement advert from the Institute of Directors Zimbabwe, which explicitly excluded anyone under 40 years old.

This was also not the only advert of this nature. I looked back at other adverts and several others had similar age exclusions, some even excluding anyone under 45.

What’s going on?

Before continuing let me provide some context about the Institute of Directors Zimbabwe (IoDZ).

IoDZ is a non-profit that seeks to promote the development of corporate governance best practices and ethical leadership in Zimbabwe. It's also part of IoD international which is in 90 countries.

As a non-profit, it is funded by member contributions and its members include many of the large corporates in Zimbabwe, including Delta Corporation, Econet, SeedCo, among others.

So this organisation should have a good understanding of how corporates decide on who they place on boards as a director.

One of the services that IoDZ offers is helping members or clients find directors which is what the director placement advert was about.

The advert was a bit alarming, especially when you consider what the other exclusions are.

Essentially it says - you can't be on our board if you are a criminal, bankrupt or under 40. Is being under 40 that bad?

I guess life does begin at 40!

Now, it is possible that there is a good reason for the age exclusion. Perhaps the board already has many 30-year-olds, and so, for balance, they wanted someone 40 or older.

This is theoretically possible, but when you consider the context in Zimbabwe, it seems unlikely. Finding a large company with too many young directors is harder than finding a Zimbabwean who doesn't call a concrete fence a "Durawall."

This age exclusion does make you wonder if Zimbabwe is going backwards when it comes to mentality on leadership and age.

When Econet Wireless Zimbabwe (one of the biggest companies in Zimbabwe) had its IPO, these were the ages of some of the non-executive directors.

Nigel Chanakira 32, Tawanda Nyambiria 28, Zachary Wazara 35.

In addition, Strive Masiyiwa, the CEO, was 37, and four out of five members of the executive committee were under 35. This was 25 years ago.

Now, it seems there is more resistance to having younger people in leadership positions.

To be clear I am not advocating for tokenism of having people under 40 just to say there are young people on the board.

However, why exclude young people straight away? This is unnecessary. Why not just judge on merit, which can include years of experience?

Otherwise, even Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, wouldn't qualify as a non-executive director in Zimbabwe just because he is 39!

I think IoDZ can do more in this area. Its vision and mission emphasise raising the standard of corporate governance and best practices in Zimbabwe.

Fulfilling that mandate requires challenging members and clients who use such age exclusions.

IoDZ does have a future directors program, which they started to try bring this gap. However, the program mainly focuses on training and much less so on placing people in leadership positions. It also costs about $1,300 which some may say is a big investment.

Often the leadership and age topic has been raised in politics but do we also need to have a bigger discussion in the corporate space?

What do you think?