NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Kimathi Githachuri has more than ten years’ experience in telecom distribution and digital financial services, having worked for, and with, a number of leading organizations in developing countries. He was part of the initial team that rolled out Safaricom’s M-PESA agent network in Kenya. Most recently, Kimathi was involved in the launch of The Helix Institute of Digital Finance as its first Head.

Prior to joining MicroSave, Kimathi worked for Warid Telecom Uganda where, as Head of Warid Pesa, he led the ab initio deployment of the mobile money service that saw it voted joint global winners with Barclays Bank Plc. for best new mobile money service for 2012. He also played a leading role in the product design and commercial roll-out of the first-ever national mobile-based tax-payment system in partnership with Uganda Revenue Authority [URA]. Kimathi holds an MBA degree from The University of Nairobi, Kenya.

Graham A.N. Wright established the MicroSave group and pioneered much of the core of market-led approach used by MicroSave. He has had a career of two and half decades of development experience underpinned by five years of experience in management consultancy, training and audit with a leading accounting firm in Europe. He is a reformed Chartered Accountant.

Graham has provided training and technical assistance to a variety of financial institutions throughout Asia and Africa. He helped develop, test and implement a sustainable rural savings and credit programme for BURO, now an influential microfinance institution in Bangladesh with over 1 million clients. He provided long-term technical assistance to develop a rural finance system, using self-help “Savings and Loan Groups” linked to strong cooperatives in a remote mountainous area of the Philippines. In Africa, he worked closely with Equity Bank and Kenya Post Office Savings Bank (which together now serve over 9 million clients) and sat on the steering committee that oversaw the design and testing of M-PESA (now with 18 million clients). Today, he heads teams working on strategy, innovation & product development, marketing & communication and process & risk analysis for financial inclusion and digital financial services in nearly fifty countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America. He has also worked extensively on training, organisational development, research and evaluation for the usual alphabet soup of donors.

Graham has authored over 14 training toolkits and 40 papers, including a book entitled “MicroFinance Systems: Designing Quality Financial Services for the Poor” (University Press Ltd, Dhaka and Zed Books, London and New York, 2000). He was also chair of the CGAP Savings Mobilisation Working and a member of the Product Development Groups and is a Research Associate at the Institute of Development Policy and Management, University of Manchester, UK.