A contractor hired to upgrade NCBA Bank’s mobile banking system in Rwanda has been detained over allegations of orchestrating a fraud scheme that led to unauthorized withdrawals totaling more than Rwf591 million ($446,000).
Evans Harry Nandwa, a software engineer with Ronford Digital Ltd., was contracted on June 6 to conduct system maintenance and bolster NCBA Bank’s mobile and retail banking platforms in Rwanda, which operate through the MTN mobile network. Authorities allege that instead of executing his mandate, Nandwa manipulated the bank’s core codebase to introduce illicit functionalities.
According to the Banking Fraud Investigations Unit, Nandwa’s unauthorized logic changes enabled rogue integration services that facilitated system loopholes for fraudulent withdrawals. As a result, 70 NCBA Bank customers in Rwanda reportedly conducted 260 illegal transactions, siphoning hundreds of thousands of dollars from the platform.
Nandwa was presented before Milimani Magistrate Benmark Ekhubi in Nairobi, where police requested a 10-day custodial order to allow further forensic analysis of the system and to finalize evidence before submission to the Director of Public Prosecutions.
The court granted law enforcement a five-day detention window, during which investigators will determine the extent of the breach and whether additional actors were involved in facilitating the fraud across borders.
The case highlights growing concerns over cybersecurity vulnerabilities in Africa’s rapidly expanding digital banking sector, where partnerships between telecoms and lenders are accelerating mobile-based financial services. NCBA Bank, one of East Africa’s major financial institutions, has aggressively pushed mobile banking across Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda through its fintech-driven platforms.
Officials familiar with the matter said preliminary findings point to a breach of internal controls during third-party software access, a recurring issue as banks outsource key technical upgrades.
No official statement has been released by NCBA Bank or MTN Rwanda as investigations continue.
