Absa has announced a raft of executive changes.
Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg via Getty Images
- Absa has announced several executive appointments to strengthen its leadership and cement its refocused Pan-African strategy.
- The appointment of M-PESA Africa’s Sitoyo Lopokoiyit brings financial services and telecommunications expertise along with knowledge of the fast-growing East African market.
- New roles and promotions were also announced.
- For more financial news, visit News24 Business.
Absa has named M-PESA Africa boss Sitoyo Lopokoiyit as its new chief executive for personal and private banking, along with a raft of other key executive changes.
Lopokoiyit’s appointment is effective from 1 April, after which he will become the first non-South African to lead Absa’s personal and private banking unit.
M-PESA was launched in 2007 through a joint venture between Vodafone and Safaricom, Kenya’s largest telecommunications provider, though pilot versions existed years earlier.
“This appointment demonstrates Absa’s strategic focus on delivering integrated, customer-centric solutions across our personal and private banking franchise while unlocking new growth opportunities,” Kenny Fihla, who left Standard Bank to become Absa’s new CEO from June 2025, said on Wednesday.
Not long after Fihla’s appointment he announced a revised group strategy that would see Absa’s senior executives assume responsiblity for their business units across Africa.
READ | Absa to announce further leadership changes in early 2026
Lopokoiyit’s tenure at M-PESA saw the mobile money and fintech platform expand to eight countries, serving more than 60 million customers across Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ghana, Egypt, Ethiopia and Lesotho.
The company started as mobile phone–based money transfer, payments, and microfinance service launched in 2007 by Vodafone and Safaricom, Kenya’s largest mobile network operator.
Lopokoiyit, whose LinkedIn profile shows he holds degrees from the University of Nairobi and Lancaster University, joined Safaricom in 2011 after previously working for Total Kenya and Chevron.
At Safaricom he was put in charge of forging the growth strategy for M-PESA, whose name is a cognate of the Swahili word for money (pesa) and M, which stands for mobile. Between 2015 and 2018 he worked for Vodacom Tanzania before moving back to Safaricom, where he became managing director of M-PESA Africa.
In 2017 Vodafone transferred its 35% stake in Safaricom to Vodacom, which is the African subsidiary of the British mobile giant. Vodacom also bulked up its stake in Safaricom last year by acquiring an additional 5% from Vodafone and 15% from the Kenyan government, meaning it now owns 55% of Safaricom.
His appointment brings expertise spanning financial services and telecommunications, as well as knowledge of the fast-growing East African market.
Sitoyo Lopokoiyit
Sitoyo Lopokoiyit/Linkedin
Absa also announced that Prabashni Naidoo, its current group chief internal audit executive, would become its new group chief governance officer from 1 March. The newly reconstituted role covers legal, compliance and group secretariat functions.
The banking group also promoted Rushdi Solomons to group chief internal audit officer from 1 March. Solomons was previously Absa’s managing executive for compliance strategy, regulatory relations and governance from June 2025 and its chief operating officer of group internal audit from June 2020 when he joined the group.
Prior to joining Absa, Solomons was a partner at Deloitte and also worked for the Auditor-General of SA and for PwC.
Fatima Newman, who has held senior roles at Absa, iOCO (formerly EOH), EasyHQ and MTN SA, has also been appointed as Absa’s chief compliance officer from 1 March.
“These appointments reflect both the depth of talent within Absa and the strength of our succession planning, as well as our ambition to enhance our organisational resilience by bringing on board expertise from outside the firm to close the gaps in key capability areas,“ said Fihla. ”We are building a future-fit leadership team, deepening our bench strength, and ensuring the right capabilities are in place to deliver on our strategic ambitions.”
