The promise to have a smartphone that could be paid for at KSh20 a day was made in October 2019, when Safaricom made a new brand promise to be simple, transparent and honest.

The discussions to get the smartphone in the market had already started and a team was in place, working hard to deliver the promise.

They needed to get the right device, a 4G phone at the right price range for customers, and then create the software that would enable the customer pay for the phone at the minimum KSh20-a-day rate.

The software developers would also need to enable Safaricom to have a level of control to deal with defaulters.

There were also discussions with the team from Google, a partner in the campaign, who were in a different time zone.

Things were going well, and the team was moving at a good speed to deliver the project on time, but then COVID-19 arrived in Kenya in March, and everyone needed to go and work from home.

The promise still had to be kept, though, and it was, with Lipa Mdogo Mdogo coming to life on July 28.

The team got together to tell their story of how they did it, and how they felt when the first customer picked up a Lipa Mdogo Mdogo phone.