Nobody wants to die, but nobody has to die at 42. On August 3, 2025, a dreary Sunday for those who knew and loved him, Leon Kiptum Kidombo died after a battle with cancer. It came as a shock, as death usually does.
This death preceded a LinkedIn post only a month prior where he wrote of leaving Flutterwave, a Nigerian-founded fintech, after two years to—among other things—focus on his health.
Some will remember him from his days at the University of Nairobi, where he chaired the Marketing Students’ Association and served as secretary-general of the Kenya Model United Nations.
Others will remember him in his MBA class at the University of Nairobi, where his thesis, reflecting a passion for business and entrepreneurship, focused on understanding the strategic planning and business modelling concepts applied in Kenyan SMEs and barriers to adoption of this critical business success factor.
“Leon understood from the beginning that true success lay not in individual achievement, but in lifting entire ecosystems,” an article in CiO Africa quoted him.
Yet, some people remember him before he grew a beard and got his beaks wet in the fintech cesspool, when he was an enthused, visionary banker, where he was for 13 years, rising through the ranks at Barclays, KCB, Credit, Family and Sidian Banks.
In 2021, he crossed into the restless waters of fintech, first with Chipper Cash and later as Senior Vice-President East Africa, at Flutterwave, where he demonstrated steady and trustworthy leadership, “commercial acumen and regulatory sophistication,” as his former colleagues, Noel Awuor and Ali Hussein Kassim eulogised on behalf of the Association of Fintechs in Kenya.
He sought to be known for more than just having “gone to school, got a job, raised a family and died,” he said at 37, the time of that interview.
“When I’m 50 and turn back to look at the things I have achieved, what will others say about them?”
His most enduring work, perhaps, might have happened away from the boardrooms though organisations like Rigour Africa and CDI Africa, where he coached, mentored and sometimes simply sat with people who needed direction.
He was a compass to many young founders; steady and unflappable.
They will say he held hands, listened to questions, and led the ones who sought to be led.
He will be remembered by his four children and wife, Ado Galgolo. Self-confessed mummy’s boy, he will never be forgotten by his mother, a professor, whom he greatly admired for her strength and wisdom.
He’ll also be remembered by his father, whom he confessed to mending fences. In the end, the journey of brilliant men, as is the odyssey of foolish men, ends with all their achievements and failures to be pondered over, but not for too long either.
There will be the words said in rooms, the money made and lost, the businesses that were started, the children dropped off at school and the wife who shared pillow talk with. In the end, we choose to remember those who have touched us in a special way.
For Kiptum, the legacy he has left in Kenya and beyond will remain in hearts, rooms and on LinkedIn.
