Sitoyo Lopokoiyit to Quit as M-PESA Africa CEO; Ethiopia Monetisation Concerns Loom At its core, Lopokoiyit’s departure comes at a pivotal moment for M-PESA Africa — a time when the mobile money giant must shift from continental expansion to disciplined monetisation. While the Kenyan business remains a powerful earnings engine, delivering double-digit growth and deep ecosystem integration, the Ethiopian venture has yet to translate explosive customer acquisition and transaction growth into meaningful revenue. The leadership transition, therefore, coincides with a broader strategic question: can M-PESA replicate Kenya’s highly monetised model in new frontier markets — and how quickly can it make those markets pay?

Sitoyo Lopokoiyit, one of Africa’s most influential fintech leaders and the architect of M-PESA’s continental expansion strategy, is set to step down as Chief Executive Officer of M-PESA Africa on 31 March 2026, marking the end of a defining chapter in the evolution of the world’s most successful mobile money platform.

In an internal organisational communication circulated to staff, the company confirmed that Lopokoiyit will be leaving to take up a new role outside the Vodacom family, with his last working day set for 31 March 2026. The note credited him with scaling M-PESA Africa into a continental platform spanning eight African markets, serving over 60 million customers and more than five million businesses, and driving the evolution of M-PESA from a peer-to-peer transfer service into a fully integrated fintech ecosystem.

His departure comes at a strategic inflexion point for M-PESA Africa — not because of weakness in its core Kenyan market, but amid growing scrutiny over the pace of monetisation in Ethiopia, its most ambitious frontier expansion.

Lopokoiyit’s journey with Safaricom began in 2011, and over the past decade, he has been central to transforming M-PESA from a domestic peer-to-peer transfer tool into a multi-market fintech ecosystem spanning payments, savings, credit, merchant solutions and global remittances. As Managing Director and later CEO of M-PESA Africa — the joint venture between Safaricom and Vodacom — he oversaw the consolidation of the brand across multiple African markets, creating a unified platform strategy and technology stack.

By the time of his exit, M-PESA Africa was serving tens of millions of customers and processing hundreds of billions of dollars in transaction value annually. Yet the platform now faces a new phase of strategic evaluation as investors assess whether its expansion playbook can deliver the same financial returns beyond Kenya.

Kenya Remains the Growth Anchor

In Kenya, M-PESA continues to deliver strong and diversified growth.

Recent regulatory filings show that M-PESA contributed 45.4% of Safaricom’s service revenue, growing 14.0% year-on-year to KShs 88.06 billion. Growth has been supported by increased transaction volumes, deeper merchant penetration and new credit products under the Taasi suite. The Kenyan business remains mature, ecosystem-driven and highly monetised, with strong yield across payments, lending and merchant services.

There is little indication of structural strain in the core market. If anything, Kenya continues to demonstrate the durability of the M-PESA model when supported by scale, product depth and long-standing customer integration.

Ethiopia: Rapid Scale, Modest Returns

The strategic tension lies in Ethiopia.

Safaricom launched M-PESA in Ethiopia in August 2023 with enormous expectations. With a population exceeding 120 million and historically low formal financial inclusion, Ethiopia was widely seen as the next major growth engine for mobile money in Africa.

The early adoption metrics have been impressive. By December 2025, M-PESA had registered more than 23 million customers in the country. Three-month active users climbed to 5.16 million, up more than 250% year-on-year, while one-month active customers reached 2.36 million. Transaction volumes surged past 364 million in the nine months to December 2025, reflecting rapid uptake across the market.

However, financial contribution has lagged.

In the same nine-month period, M-PESA Ethiopia generated just KShs 12.2 million in revenue — modest in absolute terms and small relative to Safaricom Ethiopia’s total service revenue of KShs 9.68 billion. By comparison, mobile data generated KShs 6.48 billion, while voice revenue exceeded KShs 2.1 billion.

The numbers highlight a familiar expansion dilemma: scale without immediate monetisation.

Transaction volumes have grown significantly faster than transaction value, suggesting that much of the activity remains low-ticket in nature — airtime purchases, basic wallet transfers and early interoperability transactions — rather than higher-margin services such as merchant payments, credit products and business solutions that drive profitability in Kenya.

Macro-economic dynamics add complexity. Currency volatility, regulatory adjustments and infrastructure build-out costs have shaped the operating environment. Safaricom has already extended its Ethiopia breakeven timeline to FY27, reinforcing that the market is being approached as a long-term strategic investment rather than a short-term earnings driver.

Expansion Versus Extraction

Lopokoiyit’s tenure was defined by expansion and integration. He helped establish the “One M-PESA” strategy, unifying fragmented country operations and positioning the platform as a continental fintech infrastructure rather than a collection of local wallets.

Under his leadership, M-PESA strengthened global partnerships, expanded interoperability and deepened ecosystem capabilities. The Africa joint venture structure enabled tighter coordination between Safaricom and Vodacom markets, accelerating product rollout and brand alignment.

Yet as M-PESA Africa matures, the strategic emphasis is shifting from expansion to extraction — from acquiring customers to increasing yield per customer.

Ethiopia will be the test case.

Unlike Kenya, where M-PESA grew organically alongside the country’s digital economy over more than a decade, Ethiopia represents a compressed timeline. Infrastructure is being built in parallel with product adoption. Merchant ecosystems are still forming. Digital credit culture is nascent. Regulatory frameworks continue to evolve.

The opportunity remains vast. But the monetisation curve may take longer to steepen.

A Transition Moment

Lopokoiyit leaves behind a platform that is larger, more integrated and more globally visible than the one he inherited. But he also exits at a moment when the business must prove that its celebrated model can be replicated sustainably in new markets.

For investors and industry observers, the core question is no longer whether M-PESA can scale in Africa — that has already been demonstrated. The question is whether it can generate consistent, material returns in frontier markets without the structural advantages that underpinned its dominance in Kenya.

Ethiopia, with its scale, demographics and reform momentum, remains both the greatest opportunity and the greatest test.

As M-PESA Africa prepares for new leadership, the next chapter will likely be less about headline customer growth and more about disciplined monetisation, product depth and economic resilience.

The expansion story has been written.

Now comes the harder part: making it pay.