Safaricom eyes new digital ecosystem to spur growth
Safaricom plans to leverage niche markets in education, agriculture and health sectors to spur growth in the next five years.
Peter Ndegwa, the chief executive, while presiding over the telco’s 20th anniversary celebration yesterday said this was part of the company’s vision to become a purpose-led technology company by 2025.
“We want to digitise agriculture, we want to digitise education, we have seen the power of digitisation during this Covid-19 crisis.
So we want to go into what we are now calling a new digital ecosystem and empower the farmer, policy holders in the health sector and students with their learning,” he said.
As part of his vision, Ndegwa said Safaricom will build on its connectivity and payment platforms to become a broader technology business that enables individuals to drive their lifestyles from a financial services and personal perspective.
His announcement comes on the back of Coronavirus pandemic, which has seen heavy usage of data through online learning, while the healthcare industry has also embraced digitisation quickly to continue caring for patients while minimising risk of exposure.
Connected Farmer
Safaricom is not new to digitising agriculture. In 2017, the telco partnered with Mezzanine Ware – a firm that specialises in mobile-enabled solutions for businesses to launch a mobile and web-based service called Connected Farmer.
Ndegwa said Safaricom will leverage fibre and 4G network to provide internet to one million homes and businesses over the next five years.
Over this Covid-19 period, he said, Safaricom not only added two million customers on its network, but the number of merchants are about to cross 200,000 mark, with daily M-Pesa transactions of Sh21 million.
Yesterday, the telco also announced the launch of Pochi la Biashara, an innovative product that will allow separation of business and personal wallets on M-Pesa as part of the service provider’s continuation of its innovation tradition and simplifying its products and services.
