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Sitoyo Lopokoiyit, Safaricom Chief Officer for Financial Services has been picked to lead the newly created joint venture with South Africa’s Vodacom Group run M-Pesa platform.
“To realise our ambition, the M-Pesa Africa Joint Venture will be steered by a team of five leaders consisting of the commercial director, finance director, technology director, head of compliance and risk and the chief of financial services, Safaricom,” the telco said in a statement.
“This team will be led by or report directly to Sitoyo Lopokoiyit (Interim Managing Director M-Pesa Africa).”
The two entities said the acquisition will accelerate M-PESA’s growth in Africa by giving both full control of the M-PESA brand, and product development.
Shameel Joosub, Vodacom Group CEO, says, “Our joint venture will allow Vodacom and Safaricom to drive the next generation of the M-PESA platform – an intelligent, cloud-based platform for the smartphone age.”
Michael Joseph, outgoing Safaricom CEO says: “This new partnership with Vodacom will allow us to consolidate our platform development, synchronise more closely our product roadmaps, and improve our operational capabilities into a single, fully converged Centre of Excellence.”
Sitoyo first joined Safaricom in July 2011 as Head of M-PESA Strategy and Business Development, a role he held until September 2015 after which he moved to Vodacom Tanzania as Director M-Commerce.
While there, he was also a Vodacom Foundation Board Member and part of the EXCO team that handled the various challenges in the market successfully.