Lead Engineer

M-KOPA reaches 10 million Customers as growth gains pace. A customer views payment options on the M-KOPA app, the platform behind the company's growth to 10 million customers across Africa. M-KOPA has crossed 10 million customers across Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa, a milestone the pan African fintech reached just six years after signing its first million. The company announced the figure on 22 July 2026 from its London base, marking one of the fastest scale ups in African financial services. It took M-KOPA eight years, from its first solar sale in 2012, to reach one million customers in 2020. Since then, growth has accelerated sharply: the company added nine million more customers in the six years that followed, and now onboards roughly 10,000 new customers every day. What changed in 2020. The turning point came when M-KOPA moved beyond its original solar financing business and entered smartphone financing. That shift gave rise to what the company calls its "More than a Phone" platform, which bundles a financed smartphone with embedded insurance, credit and device protection from the moment of purchase. The model targets what M-KOPA labels "Every Day Earners": traders, boda boda riders, tailors and shopkeepers who earn income daily but rarely qualify for loans from conventional banks. Traditional lenders require payslips and credit histories these customers do not have. M-KOPA instead builds repayment schedules around how its customers actually earn, using the smartphone itself as the entry point into a broader set of financial products. Jesse Moore, co founder and chief executive of M-KOPA, framed the milestone as validation of that approach. "Every Day Earners have always been creditworthy," he said. "What they needed was credit built around how they really make a living, not a payslip. Informal has never meant unviable. Ten million customers on, that's no longer a belief. It's proven." The numbers behind the milestone. | Metric | Figure | | Total customers | 10 million | | Customers added since 2020 | 9 million | | New customers per day | About 10,000 | | Average annual revenue growth since 2020 | 50% | | Daily payments processed | More than 2 million | | Total credit unlocked | More than $2 billion | | Distribution agents across five markets | More than 40,000 | | Devices produced at Kenya assembly plant | More than 3.3 million | | Customers reporting improved quality of life | 9 in 10, per independent survey | Why Nigeria stands out. Growth outside East Africa has picked up speed too. Nigeria, which M-KOPA entered in 2019, became the fastest market in the company's history to reach one million customers. The country has since taken in more than 170 million dollars in credit, according to recent reporting on the business. Ghana moved fastest from pilot to full scale operation among all five markets. That expansion rests on a distribution network built rather than borrowed. More than 40,000 sales agents now operate across the five countries, giving M-KOPA a direct line to customers that few competitors in the asset financing space, including Sun King, d.light and EasyBuy, can match at the same scale. Manufacturing at home. M-KOPA has also pushed into local production. In 2023 the company opened what it describes as the largest smartphone assembly facility on the continent, based in Kenya. The plant employs more than 400 people, holds global ISO certification and has produced over 3.3 million devices to date. That local manufacturing base underpins the financing model by keeping device costs down and supply reliable as the company signs up thousands of new customers daily. A business model that now shows up in the numbers. The scale up has coincided with a shift from growth at any cost to growth that pays for itself. M-KOPA posted its first annual profit in October 2025, alongside a sharp jump in revenue, and its Kenyan subsidiary alone had passed 1.6 billion dollars in cumulative credit disbursed by the following month. Average annual revenue growth has held at 50% since 2020, performance that has earned the company a place on the Financial Times list of Africa's fastest growing companies for five straight years and on CNBC's ranking of top global fintech firms for two years running. What comes next. M-KOPA frames the 10 million mark as a staging point rather than a destination. Company leadership has said the focus now turns to the next 10 million customers, extending the same model of embedded credit, insurance and device protection to a market where, by 2040, Africa is projected to hold the largest population of economically active people without salaried income anywhere in the world. If M-KOPA can keep adding customers at anything close to its current pace, that next milestone may arrive far sooner than the first one did. IK, a Masinde Muliro University grad, tackles social justice through journalism. He analyses news and writes on women's rights, politics, technology, law, and global affairs. 2026-07-17 2026-07-16

Meet the ex-jumia and M-KOPA executive building an agri-tech marketplace for Africa. 09 April 2026 01:40 PM Elohor Ebieroma, a former product and platform leader at Jumia and M-KOPA, is building an agri-tech marketplace focused on improving trust, transparency and access in Africa's agricultural trade. As Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Cubeseed, she is working on digital infrastructure designed to address fragmented markets, delayed payments and limited financing across agricultural value chains. Agriculture employs more than half of Sub-Saharan Africa's workforce, yet productivity remains among the lowest globally due to limited financing, fragmented markets and weak logistics infrastructure, according to the World Bank. The African Development Bank estimates the continent's food and agriculture market could reach $1 trillion by 2030, but inefficiencies in trade, storage and payments continue to constrain growth. Amid these challenges, Elohor Ebieroma, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Cubeseed, is building a technology-driven marketplace aimed at improving trust, transparency and access in agricultural trade across Africa. Her approach focuses on using digital infrastructure to address fragmented markets, delayed payments and limited access to financing across agricultural value chains. In an interview with Business Insider Africa, Ebieroma said her move into agri-tech was shaped by these gaps. "My experience across fintech and digital platforms exposed a consistent pattern. Markets with strong economic activity often lack the infrastructure required for trust, transparency, and efficient exchange." She added that agriculture presented a clear example of this gap. "In agriculture, I saw how fragmented systems, delayed payments, and limited access to financing constrained both buyers and producers. These challenges go beyond operations. They reflect deeper gaps in how transactions are structured and trusted." Cubeseed, she said, is designed to introduce structure into these transactions. "That insight shaped how I approached building Cubeseed. We are not just creating a marketplace, but a digital platform that introduces structured transactions through escrow, identity verification, and integrated financing." Building for scale across African markets. Ebieroma's career includes roles at Jumia, Fintrak Software, NowNow Digital Systems and M-KOPA, where she worked on data-driven platforms tied closely to revenue performance and operational reliability. "Across companies such as Jumia, Fintrak, NowNow, and M-KOPA, I have worked on systems where data, performance, and revenue are closely linked." She noted that scalability in African markets requires more than rapid growth. "One key lesson is that scalability is not just about growth. It is about building systems that can maintain performance, reliability, and trust as they expand." Her approach reflects a broader shift in African technology ecosystems, where digital marketplaces are increasingly building infrastructure layers such as payments, identity verification and financing. Analysts say these layers are particularly critical in agriculture, where cross-border trade is often informal and transactions rely heavily on personal relationships rather than verifiable systems. Challenging global perceptions of African tech. Ebieroma believes global investors still misunderstand the readiness of African digital markets. "One of the biggest misconceptions is that African digital markets are too early or too fragmented for scalable technology." She argued that demand already exists, but enabling systems are still developing. "In reality, these markets are highly adaptive. What is often missing is not demand, but the systems that enable reliable transactions for payments, identity, logistics, and trust." This creates an opportunity for platforms to build infrastructure rather than simply digitise existing processes, particularly in agriculture, where price discovery, quality assurance and payment certainty remain inconsistent across value chains. Bridging governance and speed. Operating between the UK public sector and the African tech ecosystem has also shaped her approach to product development. "Working in both environments has shaped how I think about building technology. The UK public sector emphasises governance, data integrity, and long-term sustainability. In contrast, the African tech ecosystem often requires speed, adaptability, and innovation under constraints." She said combining both perspectives allows her to build systems designed for scale. "Bringing those perspectives together allows me to approach product development with both structure and flexibility, which is critical when building systems intended to scale." Trust as Africa's missing marketplace layer. Trust remains one of the biggest barriers to scaling agricultural trade platforms, she said, particularly in cross-border and fragmented supply chains. "Trust is one of the most important yet often overlooked challenges in emerging digital marketplaces. Without it, transactions slow down, risk increases, and markets struggle to scale." Cubeseed is attempting to address this through built-in safeguards. "At Cubeseed, we are intentionally designing trust into the platform through escrow systems, verified identities, and structured transaction processes. The goal is to move from informal, relationship-based trade to system-driven transactions that can scale reliably." Beyond the company, Ebieroma said she is motivated by strengthening the broader ecosystem. "Beyond building products, I am passionate about contributing to the broader technology ecosystem. I have had the opportunity to support early-stage founders through mentorship initiatives, sharing insights on product development, data-driven decision-making, and scalable platform development." She added that the long-term goal is systemic economic impact. With agriculture expected to play a central role in Africa's economic expansion, digital marketplaces are emerging as a layer of infrastructure connecting producers, buyers and financing. Ebieroma said Cubeseed is designed with that long-term view. "Technology has the potential to solve structural problems at scale, especially in markets where inefficiencies have long limited growth. My focus is on building systems that solve real economic problems at scale, while contributing to a more connected and efficient global technology ecosystem." #Featuredpost