Andrew Milne, co-founder and co-chief executive of Kuunda, has died at 54. Kuunda confirmed the news on 15 October 2026. Milne helped build the tools that let banks offer credit to small businesses across Africa. The company did not share a cause of death.
His death came only days after one of Kuunda’s biggest milestones. On 13 October, the company announced it had completed a $5 million secondary share sale. E4E Africa led the deal. Existing backers Accion Ventures, Portugal Gateway Fund and Seedstars Africa Ventures also took part and increased their holdings. In a secondary sale, early investors sell shares to others, so the $5 million goes to the sellers and not into the company. The company has not disclosed a valuation.
LaunchBase Africa reports that the sale cut Kuunda’s shareholder list from twelve to four. It also reports that early angel investors who sold saw annualised returns above 70 percent, while seed investors saw 25 to 40 percent. Those figures come from that report. We could not confirm them.
“Andy was an energetic and resilient leader,” Kuunda said in a statement. “He was much loved and deeply respected by everyone who worked alongside him.” The company added that it will carry Kuunda’s next chapter forward “in a way that honours what he started.” The board asked that the family’s privacy be respected. Milne is survived by his wife, Alison, and their children.
Milne founded Kuunda in 2018 with Sam Brawerman and Morné van der Westhuizen. The name means “create” in Swahili. They started with a problem many small traders know well. Mobile money agents, small shops and everyday customers can use digital payments and still run short of cash. The team built its first product for this in Tanzania.
Kuunda does not lend directly. It builds the technology that lets banks and payment platforms offer credit inside services people already use. It reads transaction data to judge borrowers. Its products include airtime loans, float loans for agents and short-term working capital. Partner banks provide the licence and the money.
One of its earliest partners was M-PESA Tanzania, where Kuunda first helped fund agent float and later added working capital and overdrafts. In a 2025 interview with Techpoint Africa, Milne said Kuunda now powers most of the loan volume in that market. He said users grew from 600,000 to 1.8 million, while bad loans fell from 7.8 percent to 1.9 percent. These are company figures. The report also said Kuunda had powered over $3 billion in loans since 2018. “We’re a media-shy company,” Milne said then.
Before Kuunda, Milne worked on getting services to people far from branches and clinics. He was managing director of Virgin Life Care in South Africa from 2004 to 2008. He then served as chief executive of Hello Doctor from 2009 to 2015, taking the mobile health service across ten African countries. He later became chief operating officer at the mobile money company Zoona.
In October 2025, Kuunda announced a $7.5 million pre-Series A round, above its $3 million target. Investors included Portugal Gateway Fund, Seedstars Africa Ventures, 4Di Capital, Accion Ventures, Nedbank and E4E Africa. The money was meant to fund growth in Africa and the Middle East. By then Kuunda had spread from Tanzania and Pakistan into Uganda, Malawi, Kenya and Mozambique.
For founders, his story shows how quiet infrastructure can reach millions of people without a famous brand. Index Prima extends its condolences to Milne’s family, friends and the Kuunda team.
Sources: LaunchBase Africa; Technext on the secondary sale; TechCabal on the $7.5 million round; Techpoint Africa feature on Kuunda.
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