A Mobile Money CEO Takes Over Retail? What Is Absa Actually Doing ?

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One of the ways I tend to deduce the strategy of an organization is to observe who they hire, so when Absa Group appointed Sitoyo Lopokoiyit, CEO of M-PESA Africa, to lead its Personal and Private Banking operations across the continent, effective April 1, 2026. a continental role spanning both personal and private banking. And hiring someone who built Africa’s largest everyday, money ecosystem rather than a traditional banker signals something fundamental: retail banking in Africa is being re, architected around daily transaction flows, not product, led strategies. I was intrigued about what that meant for Absa strategic direction .

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When the Mammoth Moves: The MTN Group Bets That Might Reshape Fintech Strategy and the Questions Regulators Could Start Asking Across the Continent

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Do I write quite a bit about MTN , Yes Guilty as charged, my reasoning is simple: MTN is a mammoth, and in platform markets, mammoths reshape the terrain so its best if you work in the ecosystem to have a keen eye on the moves its makes
So understanding MTN’s GLG 2026 signal, “3 Platforms, One MTN,” matters for two reasons: it tells fintechs how distribution and rails will evolve, and it tells regulators what new market-structure, standards, and data-power questions they will need to ask as telecoms, fintech, and digital infrastructure converge.

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Locked Out, Then Forced to Innovate: Let’s talk about  PayPal’s Nigeria move

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For years, PayPal access in Nigeria created an asymmetry: Nigerians could buy from the world, but getting paid by the world was constrained and uneven at scale.
When a global platform that acts like the default “trust badge” for online payments limits receiving in a market as large as Nigeria, it doesn’t just frustrate users. It shapes what gets built, what gets funded, and which business models survive.
So yes, there is resentment. And it is justified. Because the opportunity cost isn’t a feeling ,it’s a decade of limitation

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The Battle for Africa’s Mobile Money: Mastercard builds ON mobile money,Visa builds AROUND mobile money,Chinese players build AGAINST mobile money.

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The Battle for Africa’s Mobile Money: Mastercard builds ON mobile money,Visa builds AROUND mobile money,Chinese players build AGAINST mobile money.

Nigeria’s 2023 cash crisis revealed who was ready for Africa’s digital future. When banks crashed and ATMs ran dry, two Chinese-backed apps—OPay and PalmPay—kept working while Nigerian banks scrambled.
Meanwhile, Mastercard was closing a $200 million deal with MTN’s mobile money division. Visa was launching its Africa Fintech Accelerator. And in Shenzhen, Transsion Holdings watched its payments app capture millions of users.
Three wildly different bets on the same market: Africa’s mobile money ecosystem, which processed $1.1 trillion in 2024, where cash still dominates 90%+ of retail payments, and where 1.4 billion people are going digital.

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Why Africans Don’t Trust Fintech’s and Mobile Money (Yet)

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Let’s start with a simple truth: access isn’t the same as trust.
We’ve spent over a decade celebrating Africa’s financial inclusion boom — the millions of new mobile wallets, the rise of fintech titans from Lagos to Nairobi, the mammoth stats that make development economists beam. Yet, I keep coming back to one uncomfortable question: do Africans trust the financial systems we’ve created for them?
Because if they don’t, then all we’ve built are digital doors — not open ones.

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Infrastructure Investments: Building Africa’s Digital Backbone for Growth

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Having sat on two investment committees—one in insurance, another in venture capital—as well as the board of Ghana’s GIFEC (which allocates universal access funds for ICT infrastructure), I’ve seen firsthand how capital allocation decisions shape long-term outcomes.

Insurance investments emphasize stability, risk management, and sustainable returns.

Venture capital emphasizes growth, agility, and the capacity to back bold bets.

GIFEC balances financial stewardship with national inclusion goals, investing in connectivity for underserved communities.

These three lenses—risk, growth, and inclusion—mirror the balance Africa must strike in digital infrastructure investments. Governance, therefore, is not a footnote. It is the multiplier that ensures that capital, once deployed, creates lasting resilience and inclusion.

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