By Adonis Byemelwa
APO Group’s Rania El Rafie did not just receive another professional accolade this week; her appointment as Chair of the Public Sector & Thought Leadership Judging Committee for the Middle East & North Africa Stevie Awards signals something bigger about where strategic communications in the region is heading.
Announced from Johannesburg on 11 February 2026, the move places one of Africa’s most seasoned communications leaders at the centre of a programme that evaluates hundreds of entries across government, corporate, and institutional leadership each year, at a moment when public trust and measurable impact matter more than ever.
What makes this appointment stand out is not only El Rafie’s résumé, but the timing. Across MENA, public sector communications are undergoing a quiet transformation, driven by digital acceleration, rising citizen expectations, and a growing demand for transparency.
The Stevie® Awards have mirrored this shift, with recent editions seeing a sharp rise in submissions from government entities, development banks, and state-backed innovation programmes.
El Rafie now oversees the category that judges how effectively organisations translate policy into public understanding, a responsibility that carries real weight in today’s complex operating environment.
Rather than inheriting an existing panel, El Rafie personally assembled a judging committee designed to reflect both regional nuance and global standards.
It brings together Canon’s Mai Youssef, GITEX’s Sean Muir, APO Group Chief Commercial Officer Laila Bastati, and Mantrac Group’s Mohamed Elwagih, senior leaders who have spent years navigating culturally layered markets, multinational stakeholder demands, and high-pressure communications cycles.
The result is a jury grounded in lived experience, not theory, spanning corporate, government-facing, and commercial strategy perspectives.
For El Rafie, this is not abstract leadership; it is an extension of work she has been doing for more than two decades.
Based in Cairo, she has led award-winning programmes for brands and institutions including Emirates, Nestlé, TikTok, Marriott, Afreximbank, GITEX, MSD, and Western Union, often across multiple countries at once.
She understands first-hand how messaging must adapt across borders, how reputation is built slowly, and how impact has to be proven, not claimed. That practical grounding shows in her approach to judging.
“Strong communications today is not about polished campaigns,” El Rafie noted following her appointment. “It is about earning trust, demonstrating accountability, and showing real-world results. When you have worked across markets where expectations, infrastructure, and audiences vary so widely, you learn quickly that excellence has to be measurable. That is what we will be looking for.”
Her rise within APO Group mirrors the broader professionalisation of African and Middle Eastern communications.
After joining the firm and progressing through senior leadership roles, El Rafie became APO Group’s first internally appointed Vice President in 2024, a milestone that reflected both her performance and the company’s commitment to developing leadership from within.
The following year, she was named Most Innovative Woman of the Year at the Stevie® Awards and recognised among Africa’s Top 50 Outstanding Women in Communications, honours that now feel less like isolated achievements and more like markers along a steady trajectory.
That trajectory is closely tied to APO Group’s evolution. Founded in 2007 by Nicolas Pompigne-Mognard, the consultancy has grown from a regional player into a continent-wide communications platform, advising organisations such as the African Development Bank Group, UNDP, Canon, Emirates, NFL, and GITEX Global.
Its model blends strategic advisory with on-the-ground execution and guaranteed media visibility across African markets, a combination that has earned international recognition from SABRE, Davos Communications, and World Business Outlook. El Rafie’s appointment reinforces that positioning, placing APO Group leadership directly inside one of the world’s most respected business awards frameworks.
More broadly, her role reflects a shift in how excellence is being defined across MENA. Public sector and thought leadership communications are no longer judged solely on creativity or reach.
Today’s benchmarks include stakeholder engagement, behavioural outcomes, and the ability to operate credibly across fragmented media ecosystems. As Chair, El Rafie will help determine which organisations are setting that standard, and which are merely keeping up.
In that sense, this is not just a personal milestone. It is a signal of growing African and Middle Eastern influence within global awards ecosystems, and of a communications industry that is finally being evaluated through the lens of impact rather than optics.
For El Rafie, who has spent years building programmes in demanding, fast-changing markets, the responsibility feels earned and timely.
