Joe Mucheru Lands Plum Job 4 Months After Leaving Cabinet

Former Cabinet Secretary for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Joe Mucheru has been appointed the second President of JUMO, a financial technology (fintech) company which is located in Cape Town, South Africa.

Mucheru made updates to his career on his LinkedIn page, showing that the CS who served under former President Uhuru Kenyatta's cabinet had begun his new role on January 2023.

JUMO is a technology company building next-generation financial services for emerging market entrepreneurs.

In this role, Mucheru supports the company to deliver its growth goals, navigate the regulatory landscape, and build the firm’s presence across the African continent.

Former ICT CS Joe Mucheru looks on as former Interior CS Fred Matiang'i meets former President Uhuru Kenyatta. /PSCU

"He brings a wealth of government experience and in-depth knowledge of pan-African tech to the JUMO executive team and board. Joe was previously 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," describes his bio in part.

The role is based in London, United Kingdom.

According to its profile, JUMO works with banks, Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) and e-commerce players to offer financial products in emerging markets across Africa and Asia.

The fintech targets mainly MSMEs that need instant access to funding to enable them to grow and invest and boasts of a reach of 10 million customers since it was founded in 2015.

Mucheru is a global board member of UNICEF Generation Unlimited, the world's first public-private-youth partnership working to skill and connect the world's 1.8 billion young people to opportunity, as well as a Trustee of the University of Nairobi Foundation.

He previously held board positions at the M-Pesa Foundation Academy, a state-of-the-art residential high school in Kenya funded by M-PESA, Vodafone and a local telecommunications company, Bitpesa (now Aza Group), an international money transfer platform, and GiveDirectly, a non-profit allowing donors to provide direct cash transfers to those in need.

He is also the former Chairman of the African Telecommunications Union. In 2010, he was awarded the Moran of the Order of the Burning Spear(MBS), and in 2016 the Elder of the Golden Heart (EGH) in recognition of his contribution to ICT in Kenya.

He is a member of the African Leadership Network, the Kenyan National Prayer Breakfast, and the East African Business Summit.

Mucheru, who left the cabinet in September 2022 as President William Ruto named his new cabinet, was appointed to the position by former President Kenyatta in 2015.

He is the second former CS to bag an international role after former Tourism CS, Najib Balala, who was appointed by the Fauna & Flora International (FFI), an international wildlife conservation charity organization, as its vice president.

Balala was one of the biggest names to be left out of President Ruto's Cabinet after many Kenyans expected him to continue in the same capacity. Serving now in his place is Peninah Malonza.

Najib Balala with FFI CEO Mark Rose on November 3, 2022. /TWITTER.NAJIB BALALA