Sitoyo Lopokoiyit has been appointed as the M-Pesa Africa managing director effective April 1, 2021. CEO Peter Ndegwa said Safaricom will initiate the relevant talent sourcing processes to identify and appoint the next Financial Services leaders in due course. “…meanwhile he will continue discharging the functions of the chief financial services office,” he said.
Sitoyo Lopokoiyit joined Safaricom PLC from 1st April 2018, having previously served as M-Commerce Director at Vodacom Tanzania PLC Ltd from October 2015. As the Chief Financial Services Officer, he is responsible for growing M-PESA to a fully-fledged financial platform and is in charge of New Business Ventures, Product Management & Development for both Consumer and Enterprise.
During his time at Vodacom, he oversaw the delivery of several transformative products and services; led the turnaround strategy and execution for M-Pesa which has resulted in the accelerated growth of M-Pesa in Tanzania. Some of the initiatives he led include; delivery of G2 platform, M-Pesa APP, interoperable transactions for both peer-to-peer transfers and merchant payments, Business to Business payments, M-Pesa CVM, and Merchant Payments.
Prior to joining Vodacom Tanzania PLC, he was the Head M-Pesa Strategy and Business Development at Safaricom. Sitoyo has over 10 years’ senior managerial experience from different fields; oil and gas (Chevron and Total Kenya Ltd) and in the Retail industry with Uchumi supermarkets in Kenya. He has worked extensively in the East Africa Region as well as in Mauritius and Reunion.
Sitoyo holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Hons) degree in marketing from the University of Nairobi (2000) and an MSc in Information Technology Management and Organizational Change from Lancaster University in UK.
M-Pesa’s success
M-Pesa is the continent’s largest mobile payments platform, with 430,00 active agents and 42 million users across the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique, and Tanzania. It allows users to send and receive money, top-up airtime, make bill payments, receive salaries, and get short-term loans.
In 2019, over 12 billion transactions were recorded on the platform. It was originally launched by Safaricom in 2007, when the company was still part of Vodafone. Its ownership was transferred to Vodacom as part of a consolidation of Vodafone subsidiaries in sub-Saharan Africa in 2017 and in April 2020, M-Pesa was acquired by Vodacom and its Kenyan subsidiary Safaricom in a joint venture to continue growing mobile payments in Africa.
According to Vodacom’s latest quarterly update, average monthly M-Pesa transactions grew by 57.8% to $24.2 billion year-on-year. Revenues from M-Pesa increased 10.1%, largely as the result of a 7.7% increase in customers.
