Visa Names Anne Kinuthia-Otieno as Head of East Africa, Days After Airtel Money Exit

Visa has appointed Anne Kinuthia-Otieno as its new Vice President and Head of East Africa, effective August 4, 2026. The appointment comes less than a week after her departure from Airtel Money Kenya, where she served as Managing Director for nearly five years, and settles speculation over her next move that began when she announced her exit on July 25.

Based in Nairobi, Kinuthia-Otieno will lead Visa's business across seven East African markets. Her mandate covers expanding digital payment adoption, deepening relationships with banks, fintechs and governments, and advancing financial inclusion initiatives in the region, according to Visa's announcement. Michael Berner, Visa's Senior Vice President and Regional Managing Director for Southern and Eastern Africa, said in a statement that her appointment lands at an important moment for the region's digital economy, citing her regional knowledge and track record in financial inclusion.

"East Africa is one of the most dynamic and innovative payments markets in the world, with tremendous opportunities to advance financial inclusion and digital commerce," Kinuthia-Otieno said in the same statement. "I look forward to working with Visa's clients, partners and talented teams across the region to help drive the next phase of growth and innovation."

From Airtel Money's Turnaround to Visa's Network Business

Kinuthia-Otieno's move to Visa follows a tenure at Airtel Money Kenya. She joined the mobile money operator in 2022, when it spun off from Airtel Networks Kenya into a standalone company, and left having pushed its market share from 2.9 percent to 10.3 percent, its customer base from roughly 400,000 to more than 5 million users, and its agent network from 18,000 to 170,000 outlets.

That record forms the basis of her pitch to Visa's East Africa clients. But the two roles operate on different sides of the payments industry. Airtel Money is a mobile wallet operator that holds customer funds and competes directly with Safaricom's M-Pesa for retail users. Visa, by contrast, does not issue cards or hold money. It runs the network that banks, mobile money operators and fintechs connect to when they issue Visa-branded cards or wallets, earning a fee on transactions that move across that network. Running a Visa region therefore means selling to banks and central banks rather than to individual consumers, a shift from operator to infrastructure provider.

Her prior work does connect to that new role in one respect. During her time at Airtel Money, she led interoperability partnerships with KCB Bank Kenya, Diamond Trust Bank and, from April 2026, Absa Bank Kenya, integrations that let customers move funds directly between mobile wallets and bank accounts. She also represented Airtel Money in local and international discussions on interoperability and financial inclusion policy, giving her direct exposure to the regulatory relationships that a Visa regional head is expected to manage.

A Reshuffled East Africa Cluster

Visa's release did not specify which seven markets fall under Kinuthia-Otieno's remit. The East Africa cluster has been redrawn since Chad Pollock held the role starting February 2024, when it spanned 13 markets including Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Mauritius and Ethiopia. Visa has since split off a separate Eastern Africa cluster covering Ethiopia, Djibouti and the Indian Ocean islands under Yared Endale, which opened an office in Addis Ababa in May 2026. The East Africa role Kinuthia-Otieno is stepping into sits within Berner's broader Southern and Eastern Africa group, which covered 24 markets when he took the position in February 2025 and had grown to 26 by May 2026.

Her appointment also lands as Visa expands its African footprint more broadly. The company has opened its first African data centre in Johannesburg and is exploring stablecoin-based settlement options, moves that point to a company investing more directly in the continent's payments infrastructure rather than operating purely through partner banks and telcos.

Part of a Wider Executive Reshuffle

Kinuthia-Otieno's departure from Airtel Money is one entry in a longer list of senior exits from Kenya's mobile money and banking sector this year. Safaricom lost its Chief Strategy Officer, Michael Mutiga, to Stanbic Bank Kenya, and its former M-Pesa Africa managing director, Sitoyo Lopokoiyit, to Absa Group. Days before Kinuthia-Otieno's own exit, Safaricom announced that Esther Waititu, its Chief Financial Services Officer, was also leaving after overseeing M-Pesa's Fintech 2.0 infrastructure overhaul and the launch of Ziidi Trader.

That pattern, banks and international payment networks hiring away the executives who built East Africa's mobile money platforms, now extends to Visa's own leadership bench in the region. Airtel Money has not named a successor to Kinuthia-Otieno, leaving the operator without confirmed leadership at a point when bank-telco interoperability deals, once a differentiator under her tenure, are becoming standard practice across the industry.

For Kinuthia-Otieno, the move places her on the infrastructure side of a market she spent years competing on from the operator side, with a mandate that spans policy engagement, bank partnerships and financial inclusion programs across a region Visa continues to treat as a priority growth area.