Twiga Foods co-founders Grant Brooke and Peter Njonjo have acquired a majority shareholding of 55.8 percent in Maisha Microfinance Bank Limited (Maisha MFB) through their investment company, Cactus Cantina Investments Limited. The Central Bank of Kenya approved the acquisition under Section 19 (4) of the Microfinance Act on March 16, 2023, and the Cabinet Secretary for the National Treasury and Planning gave their approval on April 4, 2023, pursuant to Section 19(3)(b) of the same act.
Cactus Cantina, a Kenyan company wholly owned by Shara Inc., was founded by Brooke and Njonjo to provide affordable financing to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and their value chains. They are also co-founders of Twiga Foods, a B2B food and groceries distribution company that operates in Nigeria and Kenya.
Maisha MFB, which received its license on May 21, 2016, is a medium-sized microfinance bank that caters to insurance policyholders, insurance agents, micro, small and medium enterprises, and regular salaried people. The bank’s branch and head office are located at Chester House, Nairobi, and it holds a market share of 1.4 percent of the microfinance banking sector as at December 31, 2022.
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Cactus Cantina’s investment is expected to transform Maisha MFB’s business model in line with the Central Bank of Kenya’s vision for the microfinance banking sector, providing the necessary resources to support business growth. The CBK welcomes the acquisition, seeing it as a transaction that will strengthen Maisha MFB and support the stability of Kenya’s microfinance banking sector.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer, who has several years of experience working in Africa’s burgeoning tech startup industry. He has closed multi-million dollar deals bordering on venture capital, private equity, intellectual property (trademark, patent or design, etc.), mergers and acquisitions, in countries such as in the Delaware, New York, UK, Singapore, British Virgin Islands, South Africa, Nigeria etc. He’s also a corporate governance and cross-border data privacy and tax expert.
As an award-winning writer and researcher, he is passionate about telling the African startup story, and is one of the continent’s pioneers in this regard