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Leading African fintech company M-KOPA elevates legal expert Kylie Slambert to Executive Director
One of Africa’s fastest-growing companies, M-KOPA is an innovative fintech business operating in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, and Uganda, employing over 3,000 staff and 40,000 sales agents. It has now appointed talented in-house lawyer Kylie Slambert as an Executive Director of M-Kopa South Africa
Seven years after she was admitted as an attorney in South Africa, talented in-house counsel Kylie Slambert has been appointed as an Executive Director of M-KOPA South Africa, which has served more than 100,000 customers and unlocked more than ZAR 370 million in credit for Every Day Earners since launching in 2023.
“I look forward to contributing to a business that is making a meaningful impact by expanding access to essential financial and digital services, and to working alongside an inspiring team to support sustainable growth and innovation,” shared Kylie when announcing the news yesterday, the anniversary of her joining the bar.
Kylie says she is looking forward to partnering with fellow new Executive Director Bertina Tshabalala on this new chapter. Kylie previously served as the Legal and Compliance Counsel at M-KOPA and as a member of the South African Leadership Team, providing strategic legal and regulatory leadership within the high-growth fintech. Bertina was previously Head of Strategy, having begun with M-KOPA as Head of Customer Experience in 2023, and also served as Head of Operations.
A law graduate of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Kylie began her legal career as a vacation student, then a candidate attorney with international law firm Hogan Lovells in Johannesburg in early 2017. After gaining experience in Insurance, Business Restructuring and Insolvency, and Employment Law, Kylie specialised in dispute resolution at Hogan Lovells as an associate. She also practiced at Lawtons Africa, then was an associate for four years in the Dispute Resolution Practice of Baker McKenzie South Africa, before joining M-KOPA South Africa in August last year.
It was particularly meaningful that the new opportunity coincided with the anniversary of her admission to the South African Bar, shared Kylie, with that original milestone laying the foundation for her legal career, and continuing to shape how she approaches leadership, governance, and responsibility. “Thank you to everyone who has supported me on this journey. I’m so excited for what lies ahead.”
M-KOPA was founded in Kenya in 2010 based on the idea that combining digital micropayments with GSM connectivity could provide affordable access to life-enhancing products. Since then, the fintech company has built a financial platform that’s deployed over over $2 billion in credit while enabling 7 million customers across Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa to own quality smartphones, access digital services, and progress towards their financial goals.
Speaking at the 22nd Annual AVCA Conference & VC Summit in Nairobi last week, M-KOPA co-founder and CEO Jesse Moore shared why the Silicon Valley ‘launch and you’re done’ model doesn’t work in Africa, while diving into some of the ‘untold story’ of M-KOPA’s fifteen year journey to scale, and the importance of local people.
“The truth of what we’ve had to build and why it’s taken fifteen years to get to this scale is because there is also a huge amount of operating capacity on the ground that we need to supplement with technology,” said Moore. “We are very proud of the fact that we have 3,000 full-time employees in addition to the 40,000 agents that make an income every month from our business. But that human element is maybe the untold story of the technology that we’ve deployed.”