Long-form conversations with the people designing, regulating and operating financial systems.
A young programmer was dismissed and deported before he could complete a bank system. He returned to Nairobi, finished the code and built Craft Silicon into financial infrastructure used by hundreds of institutions. Twenty-six years later, his unfinished work is corporate. Spoken promises, product instincts and founder authority must become systems that survive him.
CEO Spotlight · 21 Sep 2026 · 18 min read
A student printing business taught her how quickly a small operator can be outmatched. M-order gave a retailer a voice, WezaTele carried that order through supply chains, and Pezesha now asks banks to finance the business behind it. Her next test is to ensure the scoring system can also answer to the person it scores.
CEO Spotlight · 21 Sep 2026 · 13 min read
Raised in Addis Ababa, formed in journalism and tested in the business of media, Spotify’s Sub-Saharan Africa chief has spent her career widening the audience for African voices. Now she wants a musician to be able to make a living without first becoming famous abroad.
CEO Spotlight · 15 Sep 2026 · 8 min read
Absa’s new group chief executive has made bureaucracy his first target, arguing that too many decisions have been pulled into head office at the expense of customers, staff and commercial speed. Early process gains are visible, but the harder test is whether faster decisions can translate into stronger returns across the group, including Kenya, where profits have come under pressure even as the parent has increased its stake.
CEO Spotlight · 14 Sep 2026 · 9 min read
Tala began with one lender learning enough about one woman to trust her. Fifteen years later, its systems have served more than 15 million people. Siroya’s unfinished work is to ensure that the financial identity Tala creates becomes an asset for the borrower, not only an advantage for the lender.
CEO Spotlight · 6 Sep 2026 · 12 min read
James Mwangi grew up watching formal finance exclude families like his. He later left a senior banking career to help rescue an insolvent building society and turn it into a regional group with KSh2.16 trillion in assets. More than three decades later, Equity's hardest task is to preserve its purpose, controls and judgement at a scale that no longer resembles the institution he joined.
CEO Spotlight · 28 Aug 2026 · 18 min read
Paul Russo’s rise from human resources to the top of KCB Group has been defined by difficult assignments, from helping reopen Chase Bank and rehabilitating National Bank to cleaning up KCB’s loan book and reshaping leadership across a seven-country footprint. With assets now above KSh2 trillion, profits at record levels and new bets on payments and fintech infrastructure, his harder task is institutional: turning a people-led leadership philosophy into systems, local management and controls strong enough to hold together a regional banking group at scale.
CEO Spotlight · 25 Aug 2026 · 16 min read
Dr Gideon Muriuki took charge of Co-operative Bank in 2001 after a KSh2.3 billion loss and has since helped build it into a group approaching KSh1 trillion in assets, with record profits, millions of customers and an expanding financial-services portfolio. But after 25 years at the helm, the defining question is shifting from turnaround to succession: whether Co-op Bank can convert the judgement, relationships and institutional discipline accumulated under one chief executive into a governance structure capable of sustaining growth without depending on him.
CEO Spotlight · 25 Aug 2026 · 13 min read