South African fintech Jumo appoints former ICT CS Joe Mucheru as president
JUMO, a South African fintech has appointed former ICT Cabinet secretary Joe Mucheru as the president.
In his new role, Mucheru will support the company to deliver its growth goals, navigate the regulatory landscape, and build the firm’s presence across the African continent.
“We are honored to be able to welcome Joe to JUMO. He brings an invaluable perspective given his experience as an entrepreneur, Google executive, and regulator,” Jumo founder Andrew Watkins-Ball said.
Founded in 2015, JUMO is a market-leading Banking as a Service platform that uses AI to power financial services in emerging markets. As of October last year, the JUMO platform has been used to make 130 million loans, totaling $4 billion, to more than 20 million people and small businesses in Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, and Côte d’Ivoire.
In October last year, the firm launched Vela, an asset management engine built to give investors access to real social impact investments at the highest standards of governance and control.
Vela is underpinned by JUMO’s AI and machine learning capabilities that seek to democratize access to funding. The platform allocates multi-currency funds (US$ and crypto) to select portfolios, making it possible for qualifying investors to put money to work alongside pan-African banks and watch it perform in real-time.
The launch followed JUMO’s US$120 million fundraising in November 2021 led by Fidelity Management & Research Company, LLC, Visa, and Kingsway. The round has supported the scaling of JUMO’s platform capacity and brought JUMO’s total funding to c.US$200 million.
Mucheru served as Cabinet Secretary in the Ministry of ICT, Innovation and Youth Affairs, appointed by former president Uhuru’s government. An office he held office from 2015 to 2022.
Previously, he was the head of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) for Google, based in Nairobi, serving as Google’s first SSA employee. He joined Google in 2007 where he led the delivery of strategy, business planning and operations and was key to setting up Google’s presence on the continent. Prior to Google, he worked at Wananchi Online, the parent company of internet service provider Zuku, a company he co-founded in 1999.
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