Absa poaches again

The Kenyan subsidiary of Absa, the tier-1 South African bank, has hired Sitoyo Lopokoiyit, the Managing Director of M-PESA Africa, as its new Chief Executive for Personal and Private Banking. He officially exits M-PESA at the end of March and walks into Absa in April. 

A key hire with a packed CV: Since taking over in 2021, Lopokoiyit has led M-Pesa's pivot from a money-transfer tool into a super app, layering savings, credit, remittances, and stock trading, to reach 37 million monthly users. He previously helped launch Safaricom's Fuliza, the world’s first mobile money overdraft, and expanded M-Shwari into micro-savings and credit. Before entering the mobile money sector, he built a distribution and consumer strategy at Uchumi Supermarkets, Chevron (Caltex), and Total Kenya.

Why is Absa poaching so much? In January, Absa's South African arm poached two executives from its competitor, Standard Bank, months after poaching other former Standard Bank executives. This looks strategic. Absa appears to be stacking its leadership bench with executives who understand digital scale in the banking ecosystem and mass-market financial products. When a bank poaches like this, it’s usually building something bigger than it's letting on.

What this could mean: With Sitoyo now at Absa, we can expect deeper digital retail plays, possibly tighter integration between banking and everyday financial services.

Onafriq, an African fintech, has partnered with Conduit, a cross-border payments firm, to start using blockchain-based dollar tokens like USDC to manage its liquidity and settle cross-border payments.

What would this partnership do? Onafriq will use stablecoins to fund accounts, rebalance treasury positions across countries, and settle payouts in markets where traditional bank transfers can take days. Instead of routing funds through layers of correspondent banks, Onafriq can move tokenised dollars almost instantly and then convert them back into fiat through regulated off-ramps.

Why this matters now: Cross-border payments in Africa still lean on SWIFT payment rails, which often go through multiple intermediary banks, each adding compliance checks and delays. Stablecoins compress that chain. African fintechs are testing this model: in October 2025, Africa’s largest payments infrastructure company, Flutterwave, partnered with Polygon Labs, a blockchain software company, to enable instant, low-cost settlements across more than 30 African countries. i

What to watch: If this partnership works, Onafriq users should expect faster payouts and lower liquidity friction. The bigger picture paints Africa’s payment infrastructure as one moving away from bank-dependent rails, and Onafriq doesn’t want to be left out.

Delta40, an Africa-focused venture builder, has closed a $20 million fund made up of equity, debt, and grants. Its goal is to invest in early-stage startups and build more of them internally through its venture studio model in Kenya and Nigeria.

There's more: The company says that more than half of the fund is commercial capital. Investors expect returns, and in the African market, where startup funding deals have tightened, as evidenced by the 8% drop in funding deals from 2024 to 2025, patience has thinned.

More than their chequebook: Delta40 typically writes first cheques between $100,000 and $500,000 at the idea or seed stage, but money is only part of the offer. Through its studio, the team helps founders with their products, provides assistance in hiring early teams, refines market strategy, and prepares for future fundraising, as a cofounder would.

Where the money is going: The venture builder is focusing on energy and mobility, agriculture and food systems, and fintech, sectors where data and AI can unlock scale. Its agriculture focus is notable because the Agritech sector was the only major sector to see funding decline in 2025, as investors pulled back from climate-exposed and infrastructure-heavy bets. Delta40's leaning into that dip may just yet revive the sector's momentum in 2026.

Sentech, South Africa's state signal distributor, has said that it is no longer a going concern after the National Treasury stepped in with R889 million ($56 million) in emergency funding. When a company says it’s “not a going concern,” it means auditors are no longer confident it can keep operating normally in the near future without outside help.

Are you broke if you're owed? Sentech had about R176 million ($11 million) in the bank when it briefed Parliament on 10th February about its financial situation. But the crisis is that its biggest customer isn’t paying enough to keep it stable. The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) owes R1.6 billion ($100 million) in unpaid transmission fees. Sentech charges the corporation R71 million ($4.4 million) every month to carry its TV and radio signals, but the SABC hasn’t been paying the full bill. For most of 2025, it was paying less than half of that monthly. 

Other public entities also owe Sentec smaller amounts. The Universal Service and Access Agency of South Africa owes R94 million ($5.9 million), and community broadcasters owe R34 million ($2.1 million) combined. 

Why the Treasury stepped in: In 2025, things got so bad at Sentech that there was a real threat of a national TV blackout. The communications department had to scramble some money just to keep the lights on. The $56 million allocation is not a bailout or debt write-off. Instead, it’s a temporary fix that is especially important in an election cycle when uninterrupted broadcasting becomes politically critical. 

Sentech is still waiting to receive the formal funding conditions from the Treasury because those conditions could determine how the money is used and whether reforms are attached to it.