Absa said its active digital customer base grew 14% year on year to 5.4 million in the six months to end-June, while its overall IT-related costs rose 7% to R8.779bn. The numbers tell the story plainly enough: more people pushed into digital channels, more money spent on the machinery that keeps them there, and a banking system still trying to dress itself up as customer-first while it expands its reach.
Sitoyo Lopokoiyit, who joined Absa in April as CEO of personal and private banking, said the bank wants to move from a product-driven organization to a customer-driven organization and fix onboarding journeys so customers can use its services more easily. That’s the language of the boardroom, all smooth edges and service promises. But the real issue is who gets to decide how people access money, and on what terms.
Who Gets Pulled Into the System
Lopokoiyit said South Africa grew 10% in that digital customer segment and other African regions 21%, driven by digital onboarding improvements, enhanced app capabilities, targeted campaigns and ecosystem partnerships. Absa is also planning to rethink its physical footprint, moving away from large, costly branches toward differentiated points of presence suited to a more digital customer base. Fewer branches, more screens. Less face-to-face access, more dependence on the bank’s platforms.
He said Africa’s 900 million adults include only about 30% with a bank account, and pointed to township and rural economies as areas with unpenetrated opportunities. That’s the language of expansion, where communities become “opportunities” and financial exclusion becomes a market waiting to be harvested.
Lopokoiyit also said fintech and mobile network operators helped drive financial inclusion in Kenya from 23% to more than 80%, and he praised PayInc’s PayShap platform, used by more than 6 million people in South Africa. The numbers are big. So is the control.
The Deals Behind the Digital Smile
Absa has signed deals with Ripple to provide digital asset custody services to customers in South Africa and with Salesforce to expand its capability. Those partnerships sit inside the same corporate logic: more platforms, more intermediaries, more dependence on systems built and owned far above the people who use them.
A separate Business Day investigation said Kenya has become a major site of hidden and often opaque dealings between the government and Big Tech companies. The report said at least 12 publicly documented meetings, agreements, regulatory engagements and partnerships have taken place since 2023 involving the Kenyan government and Microsoft, Google, Amazon, TikTok and Starlink. That’s not public service. That’s state-corporate choreography.
The investigation traced a dispute involving Meta’s outsourcing contractor Sama and former Facebook content moderator Daniel Motaung, who sued Sama and Meta over working conditions in May 2022. Another 43 moderators brought a case in March 2023. The workers went to court to try to stop the bill, but the high court declined to intervene in June 2026, and the National Assembly passed the amendments on August 19, 2026. It now awaits presidential assent.
Courts, Bills, and Corporate Escape Routes
On September 20, 2024, the Court of Appeal rejected Meta’s argument that Kenyan courts did not have jurisdiction over the foreign company. On November 11, 2024, the Business Laws (Amendment) Bill was published. On December 9, President William Ruto said Sama had approached him about its legal troubles and said: “Now I can report to you that we have changed the law,” adding that “nobody will take you to court again on any matter.”
That quote hangs over the whole affair. A president announcing that the law has been changed after a company’s legal troubles. A promise that nobody will take you to court again on any matter. The machinery of accountability gets bent, and the people doing the work are left to absorb the consequences.
The report also said Microsoft signed an agreement with Kenya’s ministry of agriculture in 2020 to use technology to improve farming and food security, and that the partnership expanded in 2022 when AGRA joined Microsoft on a digital agriculture programme that included Agribot, known as Kuzabot. The report said Kuzabot can send product recommendations and allow agricultural advisers linked to seed, fertiliser and pesticide companies to advertise through bulk messages. It said Kenya is now planning a national platform for agricultural information and data through the Kenya Agricultural Data, Information and Digital Policy.
The same report said the government authority running Konza Technopolis signed an MoU with Amazon Web Services in August 2026 to expand cloud technology in public institutions and provide training in data, artificial intelligence and machine learning. AWS said the MoU covers cloud skills and adoption initiatives, does not cover the Kenyan government’s use of any AWS cloud services and carries no financial commitment.
Digital rights lawyer Victor Kiamba said Kenya’s constitution requires public procurement to be “fair, equitable, transparent, competitive and cost-effective,” while digital rights expert Irene Makau warned that legislation and agreements can work together to make it easier for companies to operate. Human rights lawyer and digital rights expert Ibrahim Oduor said Kenya’s Data Protection Act should govern how such MoUs operate and said a data protection impact assessment should be carried out before such agreements are signed. The experts name the problem. The deals keep moving anyway.