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Published by Khayesi & Khayesi Advocates LLP (KNK Advocates) | Our Perspective | May 2026 Author: Victor Khayesi Mulindi, Managing Partner Practice Areas: Intellectual Property Law | General Litigation Case Citation: Peter Nthei Muoki & Beluga Limited v Safaricom PLC; Huawei Technologies (Kenya) Company Limited (Interested Party), Commercial Case E407 of 2022 [2026] KEHC 6326 (KLR), High Court at Nairobi, Milimani Commercial Courts (Commercial and Tax Division), Judgment of J.W.W. Mongare J., 8 May 2026

This is a landmark case concerning copyright infringement. In October 2019, Peter Nthei Muoki began building something. Working with his firm, Beluga Limited, he developed what he called the M-Teen Mobile Wallet USSD Code, a detailed, operational product designed to create an M-Pesa sub-wallet for teenagers aged 13 to 17 and young adults aged 18 to 24. The system would allow parents to set spending limits, monitor transactions, manage beneficiaries, pull back funds, and track spending, all through USSD menus that run on any basic mobile phone, no smartphone required.

Muoki did not merely sketch out a concept. He documented it in meticulous detail: specific USSD menu trees, the sequence of commands and system responses, the operational flow at every step. He registered the work with the Kenya Copyright Board and obtained a Copyright Certificate. He formalised the intellectual property arrangement with Beluga Limited in February 2021. Then he went to pitch it to Kenya’s largest telecoms company.

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

Undeterred, Muoki reached Sitoyo Lopokoiyot, then Safaricom’s Chief Operating Officer and later CEO of M-Pesa Africa. Between March and June 2021, he shared detailed insights with Lopokoiyot. On 22 June 2021, in a meeting the court record confirms, Lopokoiyot told Muoki that Safaricom had been thinking of a similar product and offered to link him with a microfinance bank. Muoki left the meeting without a deal.

Seventeen months later, on 26 November 2022, Safaricom launched Manage Child Account (later renamed M-Pesa Go) under USSD code 334#. The product allowed parents to control and monitor children’s spending through M-Pesa. Muoki believed he was looking at his own product under a different name.

He went to court.

The Judgment: What the High Court Decided

Case: Peter Nthei Muoki & Beluga Limited v Safaricom PLC; Huawei Technologies (Kenya) Company Limited (Interested Party) Citation: [2026] KEHC 6326 (KLR) Court: High Court at Nairobi, Milimani Commercial Courts (Commercial and Tax Division) Judge: J.W.W. Mongare J. Judgment Date: 8 May 2026 Counsel: Mr. Odoyo for the Plaintiffs; Mr. Bett (holding brief for Mrs. Opiyo) for Safaricom; Mr. Odongo for Huawei

Justice Mongare found for the Plaintiffs on every substantive issue. The court’s orders were:

1. Declaration of copyright ownership, granted. The court declared Peter Nthei Muoki the copyright owner of the “M-Teen Mobile Wallet USSD Code” as embedded in the detailed insights shared with Safaricom through its current and former employees.

2. General damages of Ksh 1,400,067,000.00, granted, with interest at court rates from the date of judgment until payment in full. The damages were calculated at 1% of Safaricom’s M-Pesa revenue for FY2024 (Ksh 140,006,700,000), being the first full financial year in which the infringing product was operational.

3. Ongoing royalties of 0.5% of gross M-Pesa revenue, granted, commencing from the financial year ending 31 March 2025 and continuing for as long as Safaricom operates Manage Child Account, M-Pesa Go, or any substantially similar parent-child control functionality.

4. Permanent injunction, declined. The court held that millions of Kenyans, including parents and minors, now rely on the functionality and that a shutdown would cause disproportionate disruption.

5. Account of profits, declined. Safaricom does not maintain separate accounts for the product, making a precise accounting impossible.

6. Costs of the suit, awarded to the Plaintiffs.

The Legal Framework: How the Court Got There

Copyright Protection Under Kenyan Law

The legal foundation of Muoki’s case is the Copyright Act, Chapter 130 of the Laws of Kenya. The court confirmed two important points under the Act:

First, under section 22 of the Act, registration is not required for copyright protection to arise, copyright attaches automatically to an original work the moment it is fixed in a tangible medium. However, Muoki’s Certificate of Registration from the Kenya Copyright Board (KECOBO) provided what the court described as prima facie evidence of ownership.

Second, for infringement to be established under section 35 of the Act, two things must be proved: (a) that the defendant had access to the copyrighted work, and (b) that there is substantial similarity between the copyrighted work and the defendant’s product, sufficient to support an inference of copying. The court cited Franz Frederichs v Kenya Medical Supplies Agency [2019] KEHC 5744 (KLR) on this two-part test and adopted the House of Lords’ approach in Designers’ Guild Ltd v Russel Williams (Textiles) Ltd [2001] 1 All ER 700, where similarities justify an inference of copying and the defendant’s evidence of independent origin is rejected, copying of a substantial part is established.

Ideas vs. Expression: The Core Legal Debate

Safaricom’s central argument was that copyright law protects the expression of ideas, not the ideas themselves, and that parental control wallets are a common, unprotectable concept used across banking and software globally. The court agreed with the principle, but rejected its application to the facts.

Justice Mongare, citing Solut Technology Limited v Safaricom Limited [2024] KEHC 11002 (KLR) and Jack J. Khanjira & another v Safaricom PLC [HCCC No. 231 of 2011], confirmed that copyright does not protect the general idea of a parental control wallet. What it does protect is the specific, original expression of that idea, and that is precisely what Muoki had produced.

The court found that Muoki’s documentation went far beyond a general concept. It set out a detailed USSD menu tree, the specific sequence of operations, the types of restrictions, the reporting mechanisms, and the system responses at every stage. That level of detail, fixed in writing and registered, constituted an original literary work under the Act. Safaricom’s product reproduced the same structural logic: parental control, spending limits, beneficiary management, pull-back of funds, and spend tracking through USSD menus.

The judge was clear: “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.”

Access Was Established

The disclosure to Sitoyo Lopokoiyot between March and June 2021 was uncontroverted. Safaricom did not deny that Lopokoiyot was its employee. Critically, Safaricom did not call Lopokoiyot as a witness to deny the meeting or its contents. The temporal proximity between that disclosure and the November 2022 product launch was, in the court’s words, “highly suggestive and indicative of a pattern in intellectual property disputes where an innovator shares an idea, the large corporation initially rejects it, and then, months later, launches a strikingly similar product.”

The Two Defences That Collapsed

Defence 1: The CBK Governor’s Verbal Request

Safaricom argued that its product development originated from a verbal request by the Governor of the Central Bank of Kenya, who had raised concerns about minors accessing betting platforms. Safaricom’s own witness (DW1, its Senior Legal Counsel Isaac Kibere) admitted in cross-examination that there was no evidence of these meetings, no official circular, no meeting minutes, nothing.

The court was withering: “It is not the duty of the CBK Governor to advise Safaricom on product features or any other entity for that matter.” Justice Mongare also noted that the CBK witness (PW3), the Deputy Director of the Banking and Payments Department, was “dodgy” in her manner of answering questions and that the court was forced to threaten her with arrest before she honoured her summons, suggesting the testimony regarding CBK’s role was not the full truth.

Further undermining this defence: Safaricom’s own documents showed it had submitted a Formal Product Proposal to the CBK on 20 January 2021, before Peter’s official approach in March 2021. This sequence was inconsistent with Safaricom’s narrative of an organic product development driven by the CBK’s request.

Defence 2: The Huawei Proposal

Safaricom and Huawei argued that Huawei had independently developed the parent-child control functionality from September 2020, approximately six months before Muoki’s pitch to Safaricom in March 2021. Huawei produced email correspondences dated 3 September 2020 and 17 September 2020, and an FRS Proposal dated 21 September 2020.

But there was a critical problem. Safaricom’s witness DW1 admitted that Safaricom never produced the final Functional Requirements Specification (FRS) between itself and Huawei. He also could not say when Huawei came up with the final product. Huawei’s own witness DW2 then confirmed that the September 2020 proposal was the final document, directly contradicting Safaricom’s position. Most damningly, DW2 conceded that there was no formal instruction or directive from Safaricom to Huawei to commence development.

Justice Mongare drew the obvious adverse inference: “I refuse to accept that a Project of such magnitude between two telecom giants can be initiated without formal instructions and the inevitable inference the court can draw is that the Huawei proposal was a belated attempt to create a paper trail to defeat the Plaintiffs’ claim.”

There was also a fact that the defences obscured: the Source Code Repository History produced by Muoki (PExhibit 13) showed that he had begun developing his product in October 2019, a full year before Huawei claims it even began discussions with Safaricom in September 2020.

The Numbers: Why Ksh 1.4 Billion Was Just the Beginning

The court examined five years of Safaricom’s publicly available M-Pesa financial data, set out in the judgment as follows:

The court observed that prior to Muoki’s disclosure in March-June 2021, M-Pesa revenue stood at Ksh 82.65 billion. Following the disclosure, coinciding with Safaricom’s development of its product, M-Pesa revenue rose by 30% to Ksh 107.69 billion in FY2022. After the launch in November 2022, it rose further to Ksh 117.19 billion (FY2023) and then to Ksh 140.01 billion (FY2024), the largest single-year absolute increase in the five-year period.

Adopting a conservative approach, the court fixed damages at 1% of FY2024 M-Pesa revenue: Ksh 1,400,067,000.00. Justice Mongare described this as “a negligible cost to Safaricom” given the scale of its business and ample financial capacity to pay.

The ongoing royalty of 0.5% of gross M-Pesa revenue from FY ending 31 March 2025 onwards is potentially worth hundreds of millions of shillings annually. For context, Safaricom has separately reported that M-Pesa revenue for the financial year ended March 2026 reached Ksh 182.7 billion, meaning the FY2026 royalty alone could exceed Ksh 900 million.

Five Lessons Every Kenyan Innovator and Business Owner Must Take From This Case

1. Begin Documenting From Day One, Not From the Day You Pitch

Muoki’s source code repository history dated back to October 2019. That single exhibit was a contemporaneous, timestamped record that pre-dated every other party in the case. Documentation does not just protect you at the pitch stage, it establishes priority from the moment the work begins.

2. Register with the Kenya Copyright Board

Under the Copyright Act, Cap. 130, copyright arises automatically when an original work is fixed in a tangible medium. But KECOBO registration produces a Certificate that constitutes prima facie evidence of ownership, and in this case, that Certificate (PExhibit 1) was the foundation of Muoki’s entire claim. It is low-cost, straightforward, and potentially worth billions.

3. An NDA Before You Pitch Is Non-Negotiable

Muoki pitched without a formal confidentiality agreement. He won on copyright, but a parallel case decided in 2025 shows what can happen without one: another developer who sued Safaricom over a “reverse call” feature lost, with the court ruling that ideas shared without a confidentiality agreement are not protected. A well-drafted NDA creates a contractual obligation of confidentiality entirely separate from copyright and significantly strengthens your legal position. At KNK Advocates, we prepare NDAs tailored to your specific situation.

4. Ideas Are Not Protected, Their Detailed Expression Is

Copyright does not protect the general idea of a parental control wallet. It protected the specific USSD menu tree, the sequence of operations, the reporting mechanisms, and the system responses that Muoki had documented in detail. The more specifically and originally you express your concept, in writing, in code, in design, the stronger your protection. A PowerPoint deck of bullet points is not enough.

5. What Corporate Kenya Must Change

Justice Mongare’s closing words are addressed directly to boardrooms: “When an unsolicited proposal is received and rejected, the corporation must ensure that subsequent internal developments are genuinely independent and can be documented as such.” The court was critical of Safaricom’s “shifting explanations, failing to produce critical documents, and rolling out the product during litigation.” For companies that receive third-party pitches, this judgment makes robust IP intake and documentation protocols a legal necessity, not a nice-to-have.

What This Judgment Signals for Kenya and the Region

This is the first time a Kenyan court has attached a recurring revenue share to a copyright infringement judgment against Safaricom, and the first time an individual innovator has successfully sued the company in a copyright dispute. The compulsory licence framework, which allows the infringer to continue using the work in exchange for an ongoing royalty, is a creative and commercially balanced remedy, acknowledging the reality that millions of users depend on the product while ensuring the original creator is compensated indefinitely.

For Kenya’s growing tech and fintech ecosystem, increasingly referred to as Silicon Savannah, the judgment sends a clear message: the courts will enforce intellectual property rights, even against the most powerful players in the market. Kenyan copyright law, properly documented and properly enforced, is a real competitive asset.

As Justice Mongare observed in her closing remarks: “For innovators, it demonstrates that even David can prevail against Goliath when the evidence is marshalled properly and the truth is on his side.”

What Happens Next

Safaricom has secured a 30-day stay of the judgment to challenge the ruling at the Court of Appeal. The appeal is expected to test the computation of damages, the scope of the ongoing royalty obligation, and the characterisation of the USSD documentation as a literary work. The Court of Appeal’s ruling will be highly significant, and we will be watching closely. Watch this space.

On 8 May 2026, the High Court of Kenya ordered Safaricom PLC to pay Ksh 1,400,067,000 (approximately Ksh 1.4 billion) to innovator Peter Nthei Muoki and Beluga Limited, equivalent to 1% of Safaricom’s M-Pesa revenue for FY2024, plus ongoing royalties of 0.5% of gross M-Pesa revenue annually for as long as the product remains in operation. The court held that Muoki’s documented, registered USSD wallet concept was a protected literary work under the Copyright Act, Cap. 130, and that Safaricom infringed it in developing and launching M-Pesa Go. Citation: [2026] KEHC 6326 (KLR).

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the full citation of the Muoki v Safaricom case? Peter Nthei Muoki & Beluga Limited v Safaricom PLC; Huawei Technologies (Kenya) Company Limited (Interested Party), Commercial Case E407 of 2022 [2026] KEHC 6326 (KLR). Judgment delivered 8 May 2026 by J.W.W. Mongare J. at the High Court at Nairobi, Milimani Commercial Courts (Commercial and Tax Division). Available on the Kenya Law Reports at new.kenyalaw.org.

Does copyright protect my business idea in Kenya? No, copyright does not protect ideas. Under the Copyright Act, Cap. 130, it protects the original expression of an idea when fixed in a tangible medium (writing, code, drawings). The more detailed and specific your expression, the stronger your protection. If you have only an idea in your head, you have no copyright protection.

What does registering with the Kenya Copyright Board (KECOBO) do? Registration is not required for copyright to arise, section 22 of the Copyright Act makes clear that protection attaches automatically. However, KECOBO registration produces a Copyright Certificate that constitutes prima facie evidence of ownership in court proceedings. In the Muoki case, that certificate was the cornerstone of the Plaintiffs’ case.

What two things must I prove in a copyright infringement case in Kenya? Under section 35 of the Copyright Act: (1) that the defendant had access to your copyrighted work, and (2) that there is substantial similarity between your work and the defendant’s product sufficient to support an inference of copying. If similarities are sufficient and the defendant’s explanation of independent origin is rejected, copying of a substantial part is established.

Should I sign an NDA before pitching my idea to a company? Yes, always. Copyright law protects the expression of an idea, but a Non-Disclosure Agreement creates a separate contractual obligation of confidentiality. A 2025 Kenyan case shows that ideas shared without a confidentiality agreement may not be legally protected at all. KNK Advocates can prepare a tailored NDA for your specific situation.

What is a compulsory licence and when does it apply? A compulsory licence is a court-ordered right for an infringer to continue using a copyrighted work in exchange for an ongoing royalty payment. In Muoki v Safaricom, the court declined to grant a permanent injunction (which would have shut down M-Pesa Go) but instead awarded a 0.5% ongoing royalty as the price of Safaricom’s continued use of the product. This is an innovative remedy that balances public interest with the creator’s right to fair compensation.

How are copyright damages calculated in Kenya? Under section 35(4)(a) and (c) of the Copyright Act, the court can award general damages and/or a reasonable royalty based on what a licensee would have paid. In this case, the court assessed damages at 1% of Safaricom’s FY2024 M-Pesa revenue, Ksh 1,400,067,000, as a “commercially reasonable and proportionate” figure reflecting the scale of the infringement and Safaricom’s financial capacity.

What should I do if I believe my copyright has been infringed? First, preserve all evidence of your original work and its development history, timestamped files, source code repositories, emails, registration certificates. Second, document every instance of the alleged infringing activity. Third, seek legal advice promptly, limitation periods apply. KNK Advocates offers a free initial consultation for intellectual property and litigation matters.

The contents of this article are for general informational and educational purposes only and do not constitute legal advice. The law stated reflects the position as at May 2026. The Muoki v Safaricom judgment remains subject to appeal at the Court of Appeal. Every situation is unique and you should seek specific legal advice tailored to your circumstances from a qualified Kenyan advocate. Khayesi & Khayesi Advocates LLP accepts no liability for reliance on the general information in this article.

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Published under Our Perspective, KNK Advocates | May 2026