Esther Waititu To Leave Safaricom

Esther Waititu, Safaricom’s Chief Financial Services Officer, will leave the telecommunications company at the end of July after more than three years in a role that oversaw the continued expansion of M-PESA’s digital financial services business.

The announcement was made in an internal communication to employees, which said Waititu would be leaving the company to pursue other opportunities. Her final working day will be 31 July 2026.

Waititu joined Safaricom in February 2023 and has since led the company’s financial services division during a period of significant growth and technological transformation for M-PESA.

According to the internal communication, she played a key role in accelerating M-PESA’s evolution from a mobile money platform into a broader digital financial services ecosystem. During her tenure, the platform expanded its portfolio beyond payments to include savings, insurance, credit and investment products while continuing to grow its customer base and revenues.

Among the initiatives highlighted in the announcement was the modernization of M-PESA’s technology infrastructure. Waititu led the migration to the company’s Fintech 2.0 cloud-native architecture, a move designed to improve the platform’s resilience, scalability and reliability. The transition also supported the growth of the Daraja developer ecosystem, which enables third-party developers and businesses to build services on top of M-PESA’s infrastructure.

The company said these efforts helped position M-PESA as a more open and collaborative digital financial platform capable of supporting a broader range of financial services and partnerships.

Waititu’s departure comes at a time when Safaricom continues to invest heavily in expanding M-PESA’s capabilities across Kenya and other markets. The platform remains one of the company’s largest revenue drivers and a central pillar of its strategy to deepen digital financial inclusion.

Safaricom has not yet announced a successor to Waititu or provided further details on the leadership transition. Additional information is expected closer to her departure date at the end of July.

Her exit follows that of former M-Pesa Africa Managing Director Sitoyo Lopokoiyit, who left Safaricom in March 2026 to head Absa Group’s personal and private banking division in Johannesburg.