Company secretaries from across the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) Group are meeting at Chaminuka Resort this week for the Seventh Annual IDC Group Company Secretaries Conference, with leadership urging the profession to move beyond compliance and take up a strategic role in driving the Group’s transformation agenda.
The conference, organized by the IDC Legal Directorate, is taking place on 16-17 September under the theme “Embracing and Implementing Change in Organisations: Practical Positioning of Professionals as Champions and Leaders of Transformation”.
Speaking at the opening of the two-day conference, IDC Chief Executive Officer Mr. Cornwell Muleya outlined the scale of the national development targets IDC has been tasked with delivering over the next five years under the Grow Zambia Agenda, urging Company Secretaries to play an active role in realizing the targets.
And delivering the keynote address, Dr Windu Matoka, who is Acting Chairperson of the IDC Board’s Audit & Risk Committee, said the conference theme reflected a broader shift already underway in how the company secretary’s role is understood.
He pointed to Zambia's recently launched National Corporate Governance Code, which he said recognises the position as “not only administrative, but centrally strategic.”
Dr. Matoka said company secretaries sit at the intersection of shareholders, boards and management, giving them a distinctive vantage point to identify governance and compliance risks early and to help organisations translate strategy into action.
He also referenced the newly enacted State-Owned Enterprises Act, describing it as part of a new era of regulation aimed at professionalising governance across state-owned enterprises, including IDC and its subsidiaries.
The conference also drew attention to IDC's annual company secretarial and governance audits, run since 2019, which recognise and reward compliant subsidiaries, an initiative the Board said it continues to support.
