Safaricom Restructures Leadership as Digital Ambitions Grow

Kenya’s largest telecommunications company, Safaricom, is undergoing a period of executive change with the departure of Esther Waititu, its chief financial services officer. Her last day will be July 31, according to an internal memo from CEO Peter Ndegwa. Boniface Mungania, currently Director of Public Sector Digital Transformation, has been appointed as interim CFO.

Waititu’s exit follows similar moves by other senior executives: Sitoyo Lopokoiyit stepped down as managing director of M-PESA Africa in late March, and chief business development officer Michael Mutiga will become CEO of Stanbic Bank Kenya and South Sudan from August 1. These departures signal a significant shift in leadership at a time when Safaricom is expanding beyond traditional telecommunications into digital financial services.

The timing coincides with Safaricom’s efforts to broaden M-PESA offerings—moving into savings, credit, investments, and enabling third-party financial services. Notably, Waititu oversaw the completion of Fintech 2.0, a major overhaul of M-PESA’s infrastructure that migrated the platform to a cloud-native architecture capable of handling 6,000 transactions per second.

Waititu joined Safaricom in 2023 after an extensive banking career including roles at KCB Group and Standard Bank. One of her key achievements was launching Ziidi Trader in February—an M-PESA service allowing users to directly buy and sell shares on the Nairobi Securities Exchange, effectively giving over 37 million users access to investment products.