Safaricom’s Silver Jubilee celebrations, the launch of the plan to boost education and the work done to transform the firm into a technology company were, for Safaricom CEO Peter Ndegwa, the highlights of the first half of the current financial year.
For the celebrations marking 25 years since the company launched, Safaricom is running a national promotion for customers that will see 25 winners countrywide receive KSh1 million each in the grand prize. There are also weekly cash prizes of KSh10,000 cash to 43 winners per region and M-PESA cash, free minutes, data and SMS to daily winners.
There is a twist: the weekly winners of the KSh1 million cash prize will also get to pick a community project of their choice that will get KSh250,000.
“We are embedding what we have been about, which is transforming lives, in the way we celebrate 25,” said Peter.
The celebrations began with the launch of the Citizens of the Future Programme, a massive step change in the way Safaricom, through the M-PESA and Safaricom foundations, supports the education sector.
Under the programme led by the M-PESA Foundation, the plan is to upgrade 100 schools across the 47 counties of Kenya over the next five years, offer 2,000 scholarships to secondary schools and tertiary institutions and help instill 10,000 trainee teachers with the digital literacy skills they need for the future.
“Citizens of the Future is a massive programme that will reframe the way we support Education in the future and will make an impact for generations to come,” said Peter.
At the same time, he said, the quality of results was also a good point, with Kenya continuing to grow and Ethiopia approaching commercial scale and on course to start making profits in 2027 as projected.
“Kenya is very very strong. We see growth across customers, usage, broad-based growth, in particular financial services, payment and also credit, but also mobile data, which is the areas we expected to grow,” said Peter.
Customers on Pochi la Biashara have hit 1.5 million, with those using till numbers at 900,000, with the next phase being to provide the merchants with solutions to help them run their businesses better, said Peter.
The CEO was also pleased with the progress made in setting the foundation needed to become Africa’s leading purpose-led technology company by 2030.
Watch the video to hear more from Peter about the financial results of the past six years.
