Buy-Now-Pay-Later giant M-KOPA and its parent company have been accused of running a racially segregated employee share scheme that allegedly disadvantaged African staff while favouring their white counterparts and foreign investors.
- •In a petition filed before the Employment and Labour Relations Court (ELRC) in June, former employee Elizabeth Njoki claims M-KOPA Kenya Limited and M-KOPA Holdings Limited, together with major investors British International Investments (BII) Scots LLP and Generation Investment Management (GIM), violated workers’ constitutional and economic rights.
- •Njoki alleges that the company’s Employee Share Option Plan was structured along racial lines, effectively placing Kenyan and other African employees in an inferior class of shareholders.
- •Justice Byram Ongaya has now ruled that the matter concerns shareholding and valuation issues, not employment rights, and ordered the case transferred to the High Court’s Constitutional Division.
Through her lawyers, Rilani Advocates LLP, the petitioner seeks compensation, an apology, and a restructuring of the company’s shareholding to eliminate what she terms as “racially discriminatory classifications.”
She further accuses the company of orchestrating a recapitalisation between 2019 and 2022 that diluted the value of shares held by local staff while protecting those of foreign investors and white employees.
M-KOPA and its investors, represented by Anjarwalla & Khanna LLP, Coulson Harney LLP, and Oraro & Company Advocates, opposed the petition, arguing that the dispute arises from shareholder agreements governed by the laws of England and Wales rather than Kenyan labour law.