AfricaNenda Makes 2 Major Regional Appointments

AfricaNenda has welcomed its CEO Dr. Robert Ochola together with the Regional Director for East Africa, Michael Mbuthia.

Dr. Ochola, an expert in strategy and innovation within the African banking and mobile telecommunication industry, joins AfricaNenda to undertake the task of building momentum for an inclusive and interoperable approach to digital payments across Africa.

Prior to this appointment, the Imperial College London, Warwick Business School, and the University of Cape Town alumnus pioneered the development of a new Pan-African Payments and Settlement Systems (PAPSS) for driving cross-border trade using local currency. He’s also led the development of mobile payment solutions and the expansion of its product suite, along with overseeing the successful roll-out of solutions for ultra-low-cost mobile devices across Africa and the Middle East. He has also served as the Director of Strategy and Innovation at Afreximbank, as the Head of Strategy with Safaricom, and as the Director of Strategy, Research, and Innovation at the KCB Bank Group.

Also appointed to oversee the financial inclusion company’s operations in the East Africa region was Michael Mbuthia, a financial services professional with 15+ years of experience cutting across digital financial services, strategy formulation, project management, and business development.

Mbuthia has a working knowledge spanning Banking, Aviation, Agriculture, and impact development covering multiple geographies in Africa. He was the project lead for Rwanda National Digital Payments Platform working directly with Access to Finance Rwanda (AFR) and National Bank Rwanda (BNR) spearheading Interoperability blueprint development and rollout.

Prior to this, he served as Pesalink Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Ag-Chief Executive Officer (CEO) for Kenya Bankers Association payments services company – Integrated Payment Services Limited (IPSL) and was instrumental in leading the industry towards launching real-time interoperable payment platform. He holds two Masters degrees, MBA in Strategic Management & Finance from United States International University and M.Sc. in Information Technology from Nairobi University respectively. Michael is currently undertaking a Ph.D. in Information Systems at Cape Town University South Africa with research interests in Central Bank Digital currencies (CBDC’s) and ICT for development (ICT4D).