Mark Oyier’s Inspiring Journey: How Moi University Graduate Rose To Become Safaricom’s IT Director
On March 19, 2026, Safaricom appointed Mark Oyier as the company’s new Director of IT, replacing George Njuguna, who departed from the company in 2024.
Oyier’s appointment was an internal promotion. He had been serving as Safaricom’s Head of Department for Billing and Core Applications (BSS).
Before that, he had spent almost two decades working in technology, rising through the ranks at Commercial Bank of Africa, NCBA, Stanbic Bank and Safaricom.
This is his career journey as told by WoK:
Background
Oyier is an alumnus of Moi University, where he graduated in 2005 with a B.Sc. Information Sciences, Information Technology.
From Moi, he proceeded to pursue a master’s in Information Technology at Strathmore University, graduating in 2012.
His career began in 2007, when he landed a job at the Commercial Bank of Africa (CBA) as a systems analyst.
He held the position until 2010, when he was promoted to a database administrator.
Oyier’s career path kept rising when he was promoted to CBA’s Manager of Databases and Platforms in 2012, a position he occupied until 2014.
In January 2014, he became the bank’s Manager of Systems Development and Integration.
In this capacity, he helped design and implement an Application Programming Interface (API) gateway for the bank.
In 2016, Oyier became Head of IT Applications and Channels in banking operations, later associated with NCBA Group.
In this role, he participated in the implementation and upgrading of the Temenos T24 banking platform across four East African countries, i.e Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda.
He also helped manage the company’s application operations, technology budgets and supplier contracts.
In November 2020, Oyier joined Stanbic Bank Kenya as Head of IT Applications, Development and Support.
In the six months that he held the role, he was responsible for maintaining the bank’s production systems, digital payment channels, and banking applications.
He is credited with building the bank’s first centralized Service Operations Centre, which was supported by a round-the-clock Site Reliability Engineering team.
Joining Safaricom and Managing Billions
Oyier joined Safaricom in May 2021 as Head of IT Infrastructure and Shared Applications.
He managed the company’s data centres, cloud computing, enterprise applications, storage systems and technology infrastructure planning.
As Safaricom’s head of IT, he led a team of 83 employees, managing a KSh 2.5 billion capital expenditure budget and KSh 900 million operational budget.
He also helped develop Safaricom’s public cloud strategy.
In early 2024, he moved to the company’s Billing and Core Applications department.
Here, part of his work was to manage customer relationship management (CRM) systems, core billing platforms, as well as integration technologies.
In this role, he is also credited with overseeing 287 employees, a KSh 3.1 billion operational budget, and KSh 2 billion in capital expenditure.
One of Oyier’s major achievements at Safaricom is that he participated in the company’s collaboration with Huawei in 2025 to build an AI platform called Idea-to-Cash.
The purpose of the platform was to accelerate the company’s product development and personalize customer offers.
He was appointed as Safaricom’s Director of Information Technology in March 2016 as the company sought to strengthen its digital transformation efforts, especially in the wake of AI’s advancement.
Aside from his corporate work, Oyier has participated in various initiatives.
He appeared at the 2025 ISACA Kenya Annual Conference and led a Safaricom delegation to Makueni County in 2026 to discuss matters regarding service delivery.
