Mojaloop Foundation Names Jean Bosco Iyacu as CEO

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Leadership transitions at open-source nonprofits rarely generate much noise. But at the Mojaloop Foundation, the choice of who sits in the CEO seat carries real weight. The organization sits at the center of global efforts to build interoperable payment infrastructure for underserved markets, and the person running it shapes not just internal strategy but how dozens of governments, banks, and mobile money providers across the developing world approach financial inclusion. That makes this week’s appointment worth paying close attention to.

The Mojaloop Foundation announced on April 22 the appointment of Jean Bosco Iyacu as Chief Executive Officer, effective June 1, 2026. He succeeds Paula Hunter, who will retire, and will transition out of the Executive Director role during the leadership handover.

The choice of Iyacu is a signal in itself. Based in Kigali, Rwanda, he brings more than 15 years of experience in inclusive financial systems, digital finance, and Digital Public Infrastructure. Rather than pulling leadership from a Western fintech hub or a multilateral institution, Mojaloop’s board reached into the continent where much of the foundation’s most consequential work is actually happening.

Iyacu currently serves as Chief Executive Officer of Access to Finance Rwanda, where he leads a 40-plus person organization. He has mobilized substantial donor funding over the past five years and has significantly expanded the organization’s scope of interventions. He also serves as Chair of the Financial Sector Deepening Network Council, coordinating collaboration across nine African markets, and is a member of the CGAP FinEquity Technical Advisory Committee.

That profile, a combination of on-the-ground operational leadership, donor fundraising experience, and multi-country coordination, maps directly onto what Mojaloop actually needs right now. Iyacu will focus on strengthening the Foundation’s long-term sustainability, securing additional funding, and supporting successful deployments across its global footprint. Those are not abstract priorities. Mojaloop has made genuine technical progress since its origins as a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation project in 2017, but translating open-source software into live, scaled payment systems across fragmented regulatory environments remains difficult, slow work.

Iyacu’s own read on the opportunity is grounded: “Inclusive finance is one of the defining challenges and opportunities of our time. Mojaloop has already demonstrated the power of open, interoperable infrastructure to transform economies and improve lives. I’m excited to build on this momentum, working with partners around the world to expand access to inclusive digital financial services and ensure long-term sustainability for the organization.

Kosta Peric, Chairperson of the Mojaloop Foundation, was direct about why the board made the call it did: “Jean Bosco brings an exceptional combination of regional insight, leadership experience, and deep understanding of Digital Public Infrastructure. This marks an important step in Mojaloop’s evolution as we continue to scale our global impact.

The phrase “regional insight” in that statement is doing more work than it might appear. Mojaloop’s technology is built to be context-agnostic, but its adoption challenges are deeply contextual. Regulatory alignment, central bank buy-in, integration with mobile money operators, and the political economy of interoperability agreements all vary significantly from market to market. A leader who has spent fifteen years navigating those dynamics in Africa, and specifically in Rwanda, one of the continent’s more sophisticated digital finance environments, brings practical credibility that matters when the foundation is in rooms with ministers and central bankers.

Mojaloop was originally created and released by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Level One Project in 2017, with grants to the foundation including $4.7 million in 2020 and $8.5 million in 2023. Recent deployments include a 2024 initiative in the Philippines and a 2025 announcement to launch an interoperable payment system in Bangladesh.That global footprint is expanding, but it is also stretching the organization’s capacity in ways that demand experienced leadership with a fundraiser’s instinct and an operator’s discipline.

Hunter, who steered the foundation through its most formative years, leaves behind a stronger organization than the one she inherited. The appointment of a Rwanda-based CEO to succeed her reflects a maturation in how Mojaloop sees itself, less as a Western-designed solution being deployed in developing markets, and more as a genuinely global institution whose leadership should reflect the communities it serves. Whether Iyacu can convert that positioning into durable funding and faster deployment timelines will be the real measure of this transition.