The High Court has ordered telecommunications giant Safaricom PLC to pay Sh1.4 billion in damages to a Kenyan innovator after finding that the company infringed copyright in a youth-focused mobile wallet concept designed for teenagers.
In a judgment delivered on May 8, 2026, Justice Josephine Mongare ruled that Peter Nthei and his company had proved that Safaricom unlawfully used their copyrighted “M-Teen Mobile Wallet USSD Code” product when developing and rolling out its “Manage Child Account” and “M-Pesa Go” functionalities.
The court found that Nthei had developed and documented the product, which allows parents to monitor and control spending by children and teenagers, before sharing the concept with Safaricom executives in 2021. The judge held that the detailed documentation constituted a literary work protected under copyright law.
“The Plaintiffs do not claim exclusivity over the concept of parental control but claim exclusivity over their specific expression of that concept in a detailed USSD code and menu structure. That is precisely what copyright law protects,” Justice Mongare stated.
Safaricom had denied infringement, arguing that copyright does not protect ideas or functionalities and that it had independently developed a parent-child control solution through technology firm Huawei Technologies as early as 2020.
However, the court questioned the credibility of Safaricom’s evidence, noting the absence of key documents supporting its claim of independent development.
“I refuse to accept that a project of such magnitude between two telecom giants can be initiated without formal instructions,” the judge said, adding that the Huawei proposal appeared to be “a belated attempt to create a paper trail to defeat the Plaintiffs’ claim”.
The court further found that Safaricom had access to the plaintiffs’ work through meetings between Nthei and former Safaricom Executive Sitoyo Lopokoiyot and concluded that the company’s product reproduced key elements of the plaintiff’s detailed USSD menu flows and parental-control features.
While declining to issue a permanent injunction stopping the service, citing public interest and the millions of Kenyans already using the functionality, the court awarded the plaintiffs Sh1,400,067,000 in damages.
Justice Mongare also granted an ongoing royalty, ordering Safaricom to pay the plaintiffs 0.5 per cent of its gross M-Pesa revenue every financial year for as long as it continues operating the “Manage Child Account”, “M-Pesa Go”, or any substantially similar parent-child control product.
“Even David can prevail against Goliath when the evidence is marshalled properly, and the truth is on his side,” the judge observed.
The plaintiffs were also awarded the costs of the suit.
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