Safaricom has dismissed 118 employees in a sweeping internal fraud crackdown, the same week South African banking group FirstRand signalled it is finally serious about buying into Kenya's banking sector — a market it is been circling for over 14 years.
The two developments landed on the same day, painting a vivid picture of an East African financial sector that is both tightening internal controls and attracting fresh waves of outside capital.
Safaricom's Fraud Purge
The mass dismissal at Safaricom is one of the most significant internal disciplinary actions the Kenyan telco giant has carried out in recent memory. The 118 fired employees were found to have engaged in fraudulent activities, though the company has not publicly detailed the specific nature of the fraud involved.
For a company that processes billions of shillings in M-Pesa transactions daily, internal integrity is non-negotiable. The scale of the sackings suggests Safaricom's internal audit teams ran a thorough sweep — and found the problem ran deeper than isolated incidents.
FirstRand Returns to Kenya's Banking Market
Meanwhile, FirstRand — the Johannesburg-headquartered parent company of First National Bank (FNB) and Rand Merchant Bank (RMB) — has stepped up its hunt for a Kenyan lender to acquire.
Mary Vilakazi, FirstRand's Chief Executive Officer, made the group's strategy clear: rather than overpaying for one of Kenya's larger banks, FirstRand would prefer to acquire a smaller lender at the right price and build it up organically. No specific acquisition target has been named.
FirstRand's approach is disciplined — buy a smaller bank at the right price, then layer in FNB's retail products and RMB's corporate capabilities over time, rather than entering a bidding war for a trophy lender.
The group is also looking beyond banking, with insurance and investment banking on its radar as it tries to build a broader East African operation.
A Very Long Courtship
FirstRand's interest in Kenya is hardly new. Back in 2012, it opened a representative office in Nairobi — primarily through RMB — to arrange infrastructure and project-finance deals. But a representative office cannot take deposits or run a full retail bank, so the group remained on the market's edges.
Even then, FirstRand said it wanted a mid-sized Kenyan lender. High valuations kept getting in the way. For over a decade, no deal materialised.
Now, conditions may finally be shifting in its favour. Kenyan banks collectively posted KES 241.65 billion ($1.9 billion) in profits last year — a 16.3% increase — but smaller lenders are under mounting pressure to raise enough capital to meet a KES 10 billion ($77 million) minimum requirement by 2032. That deadline could produce more willing sellers than Kenya's banking market has seen in years.
South Africa's Banks Are Crowding In
FirstRand is not the only South African bank eyeing a bigger slice of Kenya. Nedbank has already completed its 66% acquisition of NCBA, and Standard Bank — which already operates Stanbic in Kenya — is actively seeking more scale in the market.
That is a lot of South African firepower converging on Nairobi. For those tracking emerging market financial tech and banking consolidation across the continent, the competitive dynamics in Kenya's sector are intensifying fast.
FirstRand's patient strategy may now pay off — not because Kenya's banks got cheaper, but because consolidation pressure is finally creating the kind of motivated sellers the group has been waiting on for the better part of a decade.
Also: Moniepoint Restructures, CrissCross Raises Funding
Elsewhere in the news cycle, Nigerian fintech Moniepoint is undergoing an internal restructuring — details of which are still emerging — while CrissCross has closed a new funding round, adding fresh capital to the African startup ecosystem. Both stories reflect a broader moment of recalibration across African tech as companies tighten operations and investors remain selectively active.
These developments all broke on October 28, 2026, coinciding with the opening day of Moonshot 2026, TechCabal's flagship African tech conference — a fitting backdrop for a week already full of major industry moves.