Esther Masese Waititu, Safaricom’s Chief Financial Services Officer, will leave the company on 31 July 2026, ending a three-year tenure that oversaw one of the most consequential periods of M-Pesa’s evolution from a mobile payments platform into a comprehensive digital financial services ecosystem.
Safaricom CEO Peter Ndegwa confirmed the departure in an internal memo, noting that Waititu is leaving to pursue other opportunities at her own request.
Boniface Mungania, Safaricom’s Director of Public Sector Digital Transformation, has been tapped to serve as interim CFSO while the company manages the transition.
What Esther Waititu Built During Her Time at Safaricom
The Safaricom leadership change in 2026 represented by Waititu’s departure closes a chapter defined by platform transformation rather than incremental product additions.
When Waititu joined Safaricom in February 2023 from KCB Group, where she had served as Director of Corporate Banking, M-Pesa was already the dominant mobile money service in Kenya. Her mandate was to evolve it into something structurally more ambitious.
Under her leadership, M-Pesa expanded beyond payments to include savings, insurance, credit, and investment products.
The M-Pesa SuperApp was developed to host over 80 mini-apps, creating an integrated digital services environment rather than a single-function payment tool.
The Ziidi Investment Platform, featuring Ziidi Shariah and Ziidi MMF, brought mobile-accessible investment products to over one million active investors.
M-Pesa Ratiba, the first mobile money standing order product of its kind, introduced automated recurring payment capability.
Ziidi Trader, launched on 10 February 2026, went further still: an integrated mini-app that allows Kenyans to directly buy and sell shares listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange through M-Pesa.
The Fintech 2.0 Migration: M-Pesa’s Technical Transformation
Among Waititu’s defining contributions, CEO Peter Ndegwa highlighted the modernisation of M-Pesa’s technological infrastructure as particularly significant.
She spearheaded the migration to Fintech 2.0, a cloud-native architecture that future-proofed the platform’s reliability and strengthened the Daraja developer ecosystem.
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That technical migration is the kind of work that does not generate headlines but determines whether a platform can scale.
A cloud-native architecture reduces operational fragility, enables faster product deployment, and allows the Daraja API ecosystem to grow without the constraints that legacy infrastructure imposes.
For developers building on M-Pesa, and for the businesses that use Daraja to collect payments and disburse funds, the Fintech 2.0 migration created a more reliable and extensible foundation.
The M-Pesa leadership transition Kenya now navigates will be evaluated partly against how well that infrastructure holds as the platform continues to expand.
Boniface Mungania as Safaricom’s Interim CFSO
The Boniface Mungania Safaricom CFSO appointment in an interim capacity is a continuity choice with institutional logic.
Mungania joined Safaricom in 2007 as a Customer Care Representative and built his career through M-Pesa’s growth, holding roles including Senior Officer for M-Pesa Business Development, Head of M-Pesa Products and Services Development, Payments Tribe Lead, and Mobile Financial Services Consultant in Vodafone Qatar.
He previously served as acting CFSO from July 2022 until Waititu’s appointment in February 2023 before transitioning to Director of Public Sector Digital Transformation.
His re-entry into the financial services leadership role on an interim basis brings deep institutional knowledge of M-Pesa’s product and commercial history at a moment when continuity matters.
Safaricom has not yet announced a permanent successor.
A Pattern of C-Suite Movement at Safaricom
The Safaricom Esther Waititu departure is part of a broader pattern of senior executive transitions at Kenya’s largest telecommunications company.
In March 2026, Sitoyo Lopokoiyit exited after five years as Managing Director of M-Pesa Africa, joining Absa Group in Johannesburg to head the group’s personal and private banking division.
Chief Strategy Officer Michael Mutiga is also departing, effective 1 August 2026, to become CEO of Stanbic Bank Kenya and South Sudan.
Each of these exits represents experienced Safaricom executives being recruited into senior roles at banks and financial institutions.
This dynamic that reflects both the depth of talent that M-Pesa’s growth has developed and the premium that African financial services institutions place on executives with digital financial services experience at scale.
The M-Pesa Platform Waititu Leaves Behind
Waititu’s three-year tenure leaves M-Pesa in a structurally different position from the one she inherited.
The platform she arrived at was the dominant mobile payments service in Kenya.
The platform she departs is a digital financial services ecosystem with investment products, insurance integration, a developer ecosystem built on Fintech 2.0 infrastructure, a SuperApp with over 80 mini-apps, and a direct stock trading capability.
That evolution reflects a strategic choice to compete with banks and fintechs on product breadth rather than simply defending M-Pesa’s payments dominance.
Whether the next CFSO continues that trajectory or consolidates around a narrower product focus will shape how M-Pesa competes in Kenya’s increasingly crowded digital finance landscape, where traditional banks, fintech companies, and mobile operators are converging on the same customer relationships.
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