Safaricom Court Case: One of Africa’s Most Significant Intellectual Property Battles Was Fought in a Nairobi Courtroom

On May 8, 2026, a Kenyan High Court delivered a ruling that sent shockwaves through boardrooms across East Africa. At the centre of it was not a multinational suing another multinational. It was one man, a software developer, against Safaricom PLC, the most powerful telecommunications company in the region. And he won.

The man is Peter Nthei Muoki. The company he used to fight back is Beluga Limited. The case, Civil Suit E407 of 2022, was heard at the Milimani Commercial Courts before Justice Josephine Wayua Wambua Mong’are. When it was all over, the judge ordered Safaricom to pay KSh 1.4 billion, approximately $10.8 million, in damages, plus an ongoing royalty of 0.5 percent of gross M-Pesa revenue for as long as the company continues to operate the disputed product. It was the first time an individual developer had successfully sued Safaricom in a copyright dispute. It would not be easy to overstate how extraordinary that is.

Where It All Began

The story starts in October 2020, inside what was likely a modest workspace somewhere in Nairobi. Muoki, a software developer working through his firm Beluga Limited, had identified a gap in Kenya’s mobile money ecosystem. Millions of Kenyan teenagers and young adults were using phones, transacting digitally, and yet there was no structured M-Pesa product that allowed parents to monitor or control their children’s spending behavior.

Muoki began developing a mobile software product he called the “M-Teen Mobile Wallet USSD Code”, a concept aimed at creating an M-Pesa sub-wallet for persons within the age brackets of 13 to 17 years and 18 to 24 years, designed to enhance parental control over spending behavior and patterns.

Crucially, before approaching anyone, Muoki registered the design with the Kenya Copyright Board. That decision, which many developers never think to make, would later prove to be the foundation of everything.

The Pitch, the Silence, and the Meeting

On 13 March 2021, Muoki sent the concept to Sylvia Mulinge, then Safaricom’s Chief Customer Officer. She did not respond.

Muoki did not give up. He kept pushing and eventually reached Sitoyo Lopokoiyit, who had just been appointed Managing Director of M-Pesa Africa effective 1 April 2021, while continuing to act as Safaricom’s Chief Financial Services Officer.

In May 2021, Lopokoiyit replied that the product was not workable because teenagers between 13 and 17 do not hold ID cards, and Central Bank of Kenya approval would be required.

Undeterred, Muoki requested a face-to-face meeting. The two met on 22 June 2021 at Mediterraneo Restaurant in Junction Mall, Nairobi. The court record indicates Lopokoiyit said Safaricom had been considering something similar and offered to link Muoki with a third party.

That meeting would become one of the most consequential lunches in Kenyan corporate history.

Seventeen Months Later

Seventeen months after that June meeting, on 26 November 2022, Safaricom launched M-Pesa Go, a product with near-identical functionality targeting children aged 10 to 17.

Muoki saw it and recognized it immediately. He argued that Safaricom launched the product under a USSD code that closely mirrored his innovation after he had pitched the concept to the company. He filed a lawsuit that same year, seeking compensation for profits derived from the alleged infringement, as well as royalties and licensing fees.

What Safaricom Said

Safaricom did not take the case lightly. The company mounted a vigorous defense on two main fronts.

First, Safaricom argued that parental-control wallets were not new, banks already allowed parents to link children to their accounts, and that the general idea of a youth wallet with parental controls was not, on its own, protectable.

Second, the company told the court it had contracted Huawei in 2020 to develop a parent-child control solution for M-Pesa after what it described as a verbal request from the CBK governor concerning minors’ access to betting platforms.

Huawei was brought in as an interested party in the case. Huawei denied knowledge of Muoki’s concept, saying it independently developed the functionality from September 2020, around six months before Muoki said he pitched his proposal to Safaricom.

What the Court Found

Justice Mong’are carefully separated what the law protects and what it does not.

The court accepted that the general concept of a youth-focused wallet with parental controls was not original. That argument, Safaricom was right about. Ideas, in and of themselves, are not protected under copyright law.

But Muoki was not claiming ownership of the idea. He was claiming ownership of the specific, detailed expression of that idea, the menu sequences, the USSD flows, the system structure, the documented architecture he had shared in those meetings.

The court found that the plaintiff’s documentation went beyond a general idea, setting out a detailed structure for how such a system would function, and maintained that the structure was protected as a literary work.

On the Huawei defense, the judge was equally direct. While Huawei produced a proposal dated September 2020, the court found no clear evidence of a finalized design or formal instructions to proceed at that time. The judge concluded that the material presented did not establish a credible, independent development path that predated Muoki’s disclosures.

The court also dismissed Safaricom’s explanation about the CBK governor’s verbal request bluntly, stating: “It is not the duty of the CBK Governor to advise Safaricom on product features or any other entity for that matter.”

The timing of events weighed heavily in the decision. Muoki’s pitch took place between March and June 2021, and Safaricom’s product was launched in November 2022. The court viewed this sequence, combined with the similarity of the systems, as consistent with copying rather than coincidence.

The Ruling and Its Weight

Justice Mong’are’s judgment was historic in both its language and its reach.

The High Court directed Safaricom PLC to pay Peter Nthei Muoki and his company Beluga Ltd KES 1.4 billion , about USD 10.8 million, in damages, plus an ongoing royalty of 0.5 percent of gross M-Pesa revenue annually for as long as the company operates its parent-child wallet feature, M-Pesa Go, or any similar functionality.

The ruling marks the first time a Kenyan court has attached a recurring revenue share to a copyright infringement judgment against the telecoms giant, and the first time an individual developer has successfully sued the East African telecoms behemoth in a copyright dispute.

To understand what 0.5 percent of M-Pesa revenue means in real terms: Safaricom reported M-Pesa revenue of KES 182.7 billion for the financial year ended March 2026, contributing 45.6 percent of the company’s Kenya service revenue. At that scale, the ongoing royalty alone runs into hundreds of millions of shillings annually.

However, the court stopped short of shutting the service down. The judge said shutting down the service would disrupt millions of users, stating: “Millions of Kenyans, including parents and minors, now rely on this functionality and a shutdown would cause disproportionate disruption.”

Safaricom has secured a 30-day suspension of the judgment and has indicated it will appeal the decision at the Court of Appeal.

Why This Case Matters Beyond Kenya

A separate case in 2025 ended in defeat for another developer who had sued over a “reverse call” feature, with the court ruling that ideas shared without a confidentiality agreement are not protected. The contrast between the two cases tells the whole story.

Muoki won because he did what most developers never do before pitching. He registered his concept. He documented everything. He created a paper trail that the court could follow from the idea on paper, to the meeting over lunch, to the product on millions of phones.

The judgment is notable for its evidentiary reasoning as much as for its treatment of copyright law. It did not reward the idea. It rewarded the proof.

Africa has seen this kind of battle before. South Africa’s Vodacom “Please Call Me” case, in which Nkosana Makate fought for years over a concept that generated billions in revenue for the telecom, became a landmark in the continent’s IP history. The Muoki case now sits alongside it, perhaps surpasses it, in the precedent it sets.

For every developer across the continent who has ever walked into a boardroom with a pitch deck and walked out with nothing but a promise, this case is a blueprint and a warning in equal measure.

Courts do not reward emotion. They reward evidence. And for once, the evidence was on the right side.

The case is: Peter Nthei Muoki & Beluga Limited v Safaricom PLC, Civil Suit E407 of 2022, Milimani Commercial Courts, Nairobi. Safaricom has 30 days to file an appeal.