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Safaricom’s chief financial services officer, Esther Waititu, will leave the company at the end of July, becoming the third senior executive to exit Kenya’s largest telecommunications company in five months. “I wish to announce that Esther Waititu, our chief financial services officer, will be leaving Safaricom to pursue other opportunities,” Safaricom CEO Peter Ndegwa said in an internal email to employees seen by TechCabal. Waititu’s last day will be July 31, according to the email. Safaricom has appointed Boniface Mungania, its Director of Public Sector Digital Transformation, as interim chief financial services officer. The departure marks another leadership change at the executive level overseeing Safaricom’s financial services ambitions. In late March, Sitoyo Lopokoiyit stepped down as managing director of M-PESA Africa, while chief business development and strategy officer Michael Mutiga is leaving to become CEO of Stanbic Bank Kenya and South Sudan from August 1. The three executives held roles central to Safaricom’s strategy of expanding beyond telecommunications into digital financial services. Their departures come as the company expands M-PESA beyond payments into savings, credit, and investments, while building the technology needed to support more transactions and third-party financial services. Safaricom typically communicates executive departures internally unless they involve the chief executive, while publicly announcing senior appointments. Waititu joined Safaricom in 2023 after more than a decade in banking. During her tenure, the company completed Fintech 2.0, the biggest overhaul of M-PESA’s core infrastructure since Safaricom moved the platform in-house in 2015. Completed in September 2025, the migration moved M-PESA to a cloud-native architecture capable of processing 6,000 transactions per second at launch, replacing a system that was approaching its limit of 4,500 transactions per second. The upgrade also made it easier for Safaricom to introduce new services and for banks and fintech companies to connect to M-PESA. In February, Safaricom launched Ziidi Trader, an M-PESA service that allows users to buy and sell shares listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE). The product gave M-PESA’s more than 37 million users a direct route into the stock market and marked another step in Safaricom’s expansion into investment products. Before joining Safaricom, Waititu served as KCB Group’s Director of Corporate Banking from September 2021 to February 2023, and previously held several roles at Standard Bank. True scale demands moving beyond surface-level integrations to robust execution. We’ve filtered the noise out of Moonshot 2026, optimising the conference strictly for high-calibre connections between startup founders, global financial operators, enterprise leaders and individuals rewiring Africa’s technical frameworks. Get 20% off Early Bird tickets for a limited time.
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At the start of 2026, Africa’s startup funding market appeared to be on firmer footing. Startups across the continent raised $711 million in the first quarter, up roughly 27% from the same period a year earlier, suggesting the recovery that began in 2025 was gathering pace. Beneath the headline features, however, the picture was less encouraging. The number of deals worth between $100,000 and $500,000 fell from 140 to 92, a decline of around 30%. The early cheques that help bring startups into existence dropped even more sharply, from 73 to 32. For the first time in recent quarters, debt financing also overtook equity funding. The data suggests many investors slowed down in their funding of early-stage startups. Launch Africa Ventures did the opposite. The pan-African venture capital firm, whose portfolio now spans more than 180 portfolio companies across 25 countries, says it completed 15 new investments in 2026, focusing on the very early-stage cheque sizes much of the market has retreated from. Launch Africa’s 2026 cohort spans AI, the future of work, B2B commerce, supply chain, and embedded finance across Francophone, North, West, and Southern Africa. The named investments are Udu Technologies, Fincart, Tayar, Khaime, Anavid, Mainstack, Growwr, Yamify, Legendary Foods, and Masunga. The firm also made follow-on investments in nine existing portfolio companies: Clarrio, Finverity, Agridex, Periculum, Recital Finance, Octavia Carbon, Itibari, Solarbox, and Awabah. So far, the strategy appears to be paying off. In June, Launch Africa returned $2.5 million to investors in its first fund after completing 11 exits, placing it among the small group of African managers that have handed cash back to limited partners in this cycle. The firm’s second fund reflects a shift in strategy. While Fund I pursued a high-volume approach, spreading capital across a large number of startups, Fund II is taking ownership stakes while reserving more capital for follow-on investments into its strongest-performing portfolio startups. I spoke with Uwem Uwemakpan, the head of investments at Launch Africa, to understand the reasoning behind the firm’s contrarian pace and how the firm plans to get money out again in a thinner market. This interview has been edited for length and clarity Everyone else is pulling back from early-stage right now. You just did the opposite and closed 15 deals. Walk me through the reasoning. What do you see in 2026 that the rest of the market doesn’t? The reasoning is contrarian by design, not by accident. We ran a sector-mapping exercise to identify where capital was underinvested relative to growth potential and impact on Africa’s trajectory, and where the global technology tailwinds actually apply. Two things converged in 2026. First, infrastructure: PAPSS is operational, data connectivity investment is accelerating, and regulation is catching up rather than lagging. Second, discipline: Q1 deal count was reportedly down roughly a third this year, and debt overtook equity as a funding source for the first time. Everyone reads that as a reason to wait. We read it as the moment the $100K–$500K cheque, the one that actually creates a company, nearly disappeared. If nobody writes that cheque in 2026, there’s no Series A class in 2029. We’d rather own that pipeline than inherit someone else’s gap in three years. You mentioned that without first checks in 2026, there is no Series A class in 2029. Your own liquidity depends on there being a well-capitalised growth-stage class in 2030. Are you underwriting Fund II on the assumption that layer recovers, and what happens to your exit timeline if it doesn’t? We’re not underwriting Fund II on the assumption that the growth-capital layer recovers on our timeline; that’s not a bet we get to make. Every deal has to pass what we call Exit Realism before we write a cheque. In practice, that means named acquirers across banks, telcos, global platforms, industrials, and DFIs, not exclusively Series A-and-up VCs. We are seeing African exits cluster in the $50–150M trade-sale range, and that pathway doesn’t depend on a well-capitalised Series A market existing on our schedule. If the Series A layer does recover, and the infrastructure argues it will, because demand for what these companies do isn’t going anywhere, that’s upside, not the base case. If it doesn’t, we still have a path through strategic acquirers and secondaries. We’re hedged against the scenario in your question, not hoping it doesn’t happen. What makes a company the kind of early bet you describe? Market and fund timing: why now, specifically, and does the exit timeline fit our remaining fund life? Unit economics: do the numbers actually work? FX resilience: does the model survive currency volatility, not just growth? Scalability: is multi-market architecture built in from day one, not retrofitted later. Exit realism: can we name three to five specific acquirers, not “we’ll figure it out.” And founder quality, which is where a lot of early-stage companies actually fail. Sector-wise, we try to avoid crowded spaces unless there’s a strong case for a specific company. The saturated end of the market has better brand recognition. The underserved end sometimes has better economics. In Fund I you did more than 100 investments and passed your follow-on rights to your LPs. In Fund II you’re taking 5% to 15% positions and following on yourselves. Those are two very different funds. Does that change how you evaluate and invest in companies? The substance of the question is right, it changes everything about how we evaluate. A fund built for volume is optimised to not miss outliers; the underwriting bar is lower because the portfolio math forgives individual misses. A fund built for concentration can’t afford that. Every company has to individually justify a 5-10% position, which means we’re doing Series A-grade diligence at seed: separate co-founder interviews, reference checks, unit economics that have to make sense before we write the cheque, not after. And even more rigorous analysis if the ownership is below our preferred threshold. It also changes our relationship to the company after we invest. At lower ownership, we are just
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A mobile number has evolved into one of South Africa’s most trusted digital identity credentials. It secures access to bank accounts, online payments and messaging platforms, making it a critical target for organised crime. Now, the government and the telecommunications industry want to overhaul the country’s SIM registration system for the first time since the Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-Related Information Act (RICA) introduced mandatory registration nearly two decades ago. The proposed reforms, developed by mobile operators and the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, introduce stronger identity verification using real-time checks against the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) database. The goal is to make SIM registration as reliable as the identity checks banks already use. The changes extend well beyond telecoms. A more trusted mobile identity system would reduce fraud on banking and fintech platforms while giving law enforcement a stronger tool to investigate cybercrime. “The enhanced verification measures operate through existing arrangements between the Department of Home Affairs and mobile network operators, enabling ACT members to verify customer identities against the DHA database,” Nomvuyiso Batyi, chief executive officer (CEO) of the Association of Communications and Technology (ACT), a telecoms industry body, told TechCabal on Friday. Batyi said the industry concluded that RICA no longer reflects how digital crime has evolved. “It was driven by the rapid increase in sophisticated digital fraud from around 2019 onwards,” she said. Organised financial crime, identity theft and the widespread sale of pre-registered SIM cards have exposed weaknesses in the current system. Authorities have also linked improperly registered SIM cards to financial fraud and organised crime, leading to several crackdowns, including the 2024 arrest of suspects accused of selling pre-RICA’d SIM cards in Free State Province and the 2025 arrest of 48 people in KwaZulu-Natal province, for allegedly registering SIM cards using fraudulent identities. The industry also believes anonymous communications have enabled organised crime and money laundering, concerns that gained urgency after South Africa’s grey listing by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). Today, RICA mainly requires customers to present identity documents when buying a SIM card. The proposed framework instead focuses on confirming that the person registering the SIM is the legitimate owner of that identity. ACT and the government have also proposed changes to RICA. “The proposals to the Department of Justice are in line with the industry-led solution in the framework agreement,” Batyi said. “They identify legislative and operational reforms that may further improve the effectiveness and enforceability of Section 40 of RICA.” The reforms follow an urgent meeting convened in March by Justice and Constitutional Development Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi, who brought together telecom operators, regulators and law enforcement agencies to address weaknesses in South Africa’s SIM registration system. The Department of Justice said improperly registered SIM cards have been linked to banking fraud, cash-in-transit robberies, kidnappings, contract killings, and cybercrime. Officials also warned that loopholes in RICA and weak registration practices have allowed bulk SIM registrations using false identities, making it harder for investigators to trace suspects. Kubayi said the government would step up enforcement. “Given that the law already prescribes penalties of up to R5 million ($303,000) or imprisonment of up to 10 years for non-compliance, enforcement in this regard should commence from July 2026, supported by a dedicated and coordinated approach involving the police, the National Prosecuting Authority, and other relevant entities,” she said. Leon Schreiber, the Home Affairs Minister, also told delegates at the meeting that the department’s identity verification systems, already used by banks, could strengthen SIM registration and support South Africa’s developing digital identity framework. Consumers are unlikely to notice immediate changes. ACT has not disclosed how the new verification process will work. “We unfortunately cannot comment at this stage as this information will be communicated to consumers through a coordinated consumer awareness campaign,” Batyi said. Batyi noted the tougher checks will improve security without making mobile access more difficult. “The risks posed by SIM-enabled fraud now extend beyond individual consumers to the financial system and national security,” she said. “The measures do not create unjustifiable barriers to mobile access but simply ensure that the person obtaining the service is the legitimate holder of the identity presented.” The framework will still operate under the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), which governs how personal information is collected and processed. Batyi said the industry’s long-term goal is to eliminate identity theft in SIM registration, remove pre-registered SIM cards from circulation, and restore trust in South Africa’s mobile identity system. True scale demands moving beyond surface-level integrations to robust execution. We’ve filtered the noise out of Moonshot 2026, optimising the conference strictly for high-calibre connections between startup founders, global financial operators, enterprise leaders and individuals rewiring Africa’s technical frameworks. Get 20% off Early Bird tickets for a limited time.
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