Safaricom Newsroom

Kenya is a rising star in Africa's tech scene, known as 'Silicon Savannah'. But with terms like 'digitization' and 'digitalization' floating around, what's the real story? 🤔 Safaricom's Joe Kanyua joins our podcast to explain the essential differences and how digital transformation is changing the way we live and work. This is the tech talk you won't want to miss! #SafaricomNews #DigitalTransformation

Safaricom Chief Executive Officer Peter Ndegwa highlighted the importance of diversity, inclusion, innovation, and authenticity in driving success and promoting transformative leadership.

The Women On Board's Network, which brings together women serving on boards, aims to drive gender diversity and inclusion within board leadership. Ndegwa reflected on his experiences, including attending Princeton and taking over at Safaricom during the Covid-19 pandemic.

He emphasized the significance of innovation in the workplace, the future of work, technology, and consumer expectations. He emphasized the importance of leadership as a responsibility and a call to action that resonates across industries and borders.

These issues and more are on this edition of the Safaricom Newsroom podcast.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as one of the biggest trends in the tech world this year. It has enabled companies to understand their customers better and reach out to them. However, there are concerns that AI may lead to a loss of human control. In September of this year, a closed-door meeting of tech companies developing AI unanimously endorsed the idea of US government regulation. Wendy Gonzalez, CEO of Sama, believes that such regulations are beneficial for the world and society as a whole. Safaricom has been using AI for the past five years to develop products, analyze data, and better understand its customers. Kamau Maina, Big Data and Customer Value Management Lead at Safaricom PLC believes that the use of AI in Kenya is still at a rudimentary level. Open AI, the company behind Chat GPT, has made its models accessible for various applications, reducing production time and allowing for more data-driven development. Kamau and Wendy recently spoke to the Safaricom Newsroom podcast about these developments. Click play to listen to their conversation.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a popular trend in the tech industry, with more than a third of C-Suite executives utilizing it in their business operations. Generative AI platforms like ChatGPT and Dall-E can perform creative tasks such as creating advertising copy and designing artwork. However, there is a debate surrounding whether AI is genuinely creative or just mimicking data. As more companies adopt AI, concerns about potential job loss and ethical issues like cheating, complacency, and copyright infringement arise. Kenyan creatives must navigate these challenges to remain competitive. These issues and more are discussed in this edition of the Safaricom Newsroom podcast. You can listen to or watch the conversation below.#SafaricomNews 

Taka Taka Solutions is a company that has invested in equipment capable of recycling flexible plastics, which has created numerous job opportunities for waste pickers. To mark the 50th anniversary of World Environment Day, Safaricom Newsroom engaged with experts, environmental change champions, and plastic solutionists to delve into the concept of a circular economy for plastics and how this year's theme of #beatplasticpollution can be transformed into tangible action. Safaricom Newsroom also interviewed Jennifer Wang, Chief Sales Officer at Taka Taka Solutions, to discuss solutions to tackle this problem head-on. Safaricom has implemented measures to address plastic pollution, such as eliminating problematic plastics from cafeterias and reducing SIM card size. Watch the podcast below for incisive details and analysis. #SafaricomNews #WorldEnvironmentDay #WED2023

As the violence raged in Kenya in January 2008, the media came under increasing scrutiny. One of the main accusations was that the media, particularly radio, was responsible for fanning the flames.

When a prominent radio presenter was named along with politicians and civil servants as suspects to face trial at the International Criminal Court, the Kenyan media fraternity was shocked. Comparisons were made with the situation in Rwanda a decade before, where radio played a role in perpetrating genocide.

The cases at the International Criminal Court were eventually terminated but the media had already learnt its lesson, chiefly that in a country that has faced political and ethnic conflict, radio is a powerful tool for promoting peace and fostering understanding and reconciliation.

“Radio and peace” was the theme of this year’s World Radio Day, providing an opportunity to reflect on the role radio has played and can play, in mediating conflict and bringing about peace. The Safaricom Newsroom hosted Christine Nguku and Lincoln Njogu.

A small group at Safaricom was on tenterhooks on the morning of June 23, 2021 as the company launched the M-PESA app.

While M-PESA has grown in popularity and use since it was unveiled in March 2007, the app was a bold new step for the revolutionary payment solution now used by more than 51 million users across Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Ghana, and Egypt.

The app goes further from just offering payment services and serves as an anchor app that hosts multiple mini-apps that work towards servicing the day to day needs of the customer.

The team behind the M-PESA app planned for it to become the one-stop-shop for all its customer does, from the moment they start their commute to work, have lunch, read the newspaper and book that flight or train ride.

Stats from Safaricom’s latest half-year results indicates there have been 224.9 million transactions via the app, valued at KSH 603.8 billion, with 38.9 transactions per month per active customer.

The app has more than one million active revenue-generating customers, with the numbers attributed to the fact that Safaricom is continually introducing new features within the app to meet customer needs.

The M-PESA app was created using Agile, a new way of working introduced at Safaricom in early 2020. In the Agile way of working, organizations focus on how individuals interact with products and services and work towards meeting the needs of their customers.

In the Agile way of working, progress is driven by Tribes of 60 – 100 employees and small teams called Squads of between 8 – 10 employees.

We had the chance to sit down with the M-PESA app Squad from the Payments Tribe at Safaricom to understand how they used Agile to develop and deliver the super app, and to understand what it means to have squads and tribes at a company.

Listen to the podcast below:

When Caroline Masibo was a teenage girl, she did not see herself entering the tech space. But after completing her KSCEs, and during the long holiday in between, she started gaining interest in watching criminal drama. Her attention was drawn to one show in particular, namely ‘Criminal Minds’. In this show, an eccentric tech-savvy female character really intrigued her.

“There was one lady I felt I related to very strongly because she embodied a lot of things, I believed I could be. She was bubbly, bright, and very colorful… she was the tech wizard in the team, she would hack into systems, figure things out, and write code. And to me, that seemed so amazing” says Caroline Masibo a youthful enthusiasm.

In January, the year after her KCSE Caroline went on to start her Diploma in IT. Today, she is the Principal Engineer in, Core Networks Support Service at Safaricom PLC.

Caroline alongside Tima Ali (Core Networks Design Engineer) are part of the Women in Technology (WIT) Initiative in Safaricom which was started by the ladies in the technology domain. The initiative works to champion having more ladies in the technology space and to have more ladies taking leadership positions in Safaricom.

Through the WIT Initiative, the ladies go out into the community to encourage the girl child to take up STEM (Science, Technology, Economics, and Mathematics) subjects and consider careers in technology as they believe the girl child are the leaders of tomorrow.

In celebration of International Day of the Girl Child, which happens annually on the 11th of October, we sit down with Caroline and Tima to discuss the ladies’ journeys in the tech industry, what Safaricom is doing to offer more opportunities for girls in tech, and what the national outlook is for girls in Tech.

Listen to the podcast below:

Owning the space where you call home and stopping the monthly rent payment are

part of the Kenyan Dream. Over the last 10 years, there has been no shortage of options for the person who

wants to own their own home. There are property shows on TV advertising new estates and residences, salesmen and

women in traffic handing out brochures for upcoming developments, and weekly

sections in newspapers full of property on sale. Some people advise that the best way to have your own home is to build it yourself,

while others argue that going that route comes with a lot of headaches and stress and that the best option is to find a ready house and buy it.

It can get overwhelming for those who are looking to make the decision for the first time, for whom the question often is: where do I start and what is better between buying and selling? On the latest episode of the Safaricom Newsroom podcast, we are joined by HF

Group Chief Executive Officer Robert Kibaara and Daisy Magu, Lizzy Ichenihi and Judy Ndenga from Safaricom Sacco to help us explore the question.

Earlier this year, the Kenya Urban Roads Authority announced its intention to set up an Intelligent Transport Management System, which it had trialled at several spots in the capital city.

The intention of the system is to improve traffic efficiency and flow and suggests, for the first time, that technology could soon come to the aid of Nairobi’s traffic problem.

In today’s edition of the Safaricom Newsroom podcast, Evelyn Wambui sought to find out whether technology will help solve Nairobi’s traffic problem.

The most dominant story of the past 12 months has been about the pain of the pandemic.

Economically, close to two million people lost their jobs in the first three months of the pandemic alone.

In April, an interesting statistic arose from analyses of the spending and saving patterns of Kenyans with bank accounts: they had managed to stash away more than KES463 billion.

Savings normally become available once you have taken care of your fixed expenses.

The question usually is: after you have taken care of your bills, what do you do with the rest of your hard-earned cash? While it’s nice to go out and treat yourself, do you try to save or invest some of that money?

Setting aside some money can seem impossible if you can barely make ends meet or are out of a job.

For Felista Wangari, the founder of the Facebook group 52 Weeks Savings Challenge, saving was part of her culture and the reason she founded the group, which won an award from Facebook in 2018.

“Having grown up in family where savings was a culture, the value of putting money aside was engrained in me. So I decided to set up the 52-weeks savings challenge to help other people to stay consistent to their goal as well as learn how to manage their money better,” she says.

There's just so much about money that we need to know and that we don't learn in school. In today’s podcast we share some practical tips on how you can become a disciplined saver.

If you aren’t already saving, you can start by implementing some of our tips and evaluating how your (long-term and short-term) wants and needs fit with your income and goals.

As the world celebrated World Environment Day, the Safaricom Newsroom sought out Michael Koech, who is in charge of Environment and climate change at Safaricom, and Dr. George Njenga, the Executive Dean of Strathmore University Business School, to discuss how we can leverage technology for a cleaner, more sustainable world.

Safaricom is one of the companies that has committed to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and reports annually on the extent to which it has gone about fulfilling its promises on sustainability.

Michael and George agree that changing how the energy systems that power and sustain infrastructure and discuss how the telecommunications industry can support the restoration of the environment and the fight against climate change.