Thank you, Ali, for those insightful remarks. I see why you are considered
the godfather of Fintech in the region. Nobody can argue with numbers. Your
message is loud and clear, instead of splitting Safaricom, facilitate it
through better policies for it to go conquer the world. Fight there with
the giants. I was looking at the world’s largest telecommunications
companies measured by total revenues
<en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_telephone_operating_companies#>, and
Safaricom came at number 62 with $2.3B behind the market leader AT&T with
$170.8B. The only other African company to make the cut was MTN Group of
South Africa at 34 with $10.2B, dwarfing Safaricom 5 times over. AT&T, on
the other hand, is Safaricom 74 times. In the Fintech space, Ant Finance
the market leader is estimated to be worth $75B. Let us marinate over that.
@Barrack. You are spot on. I like your idea of having a localized
definition of a digital economy and enabling environment from the
government for our industries. What would be your initial definition of
Kenya’s digital economy?
@Muraya, good genesis on where the other operators lost the game, through
poor corporate governance. Are you suggesting that Safaricom should be
split, or change business model, or spin-off to be a market leader in
financial services, while Telkom is funded (by?) to be a dominant
telecommunications company?
@Adam great analogy on the different use-cases a telecommunications company
can have. I can imagine this will only grow with 5G and the Internet of
Things (IoT). I take this with me ” Telcos’ have the unique capability to
reach every single person in this country, they should be encouraged to do
that rather than hindered. Right now e-health, e-agri etc are still really
under-developed in this country. They need more support”. Point taken also
on what is the point of splitting it, then it becomes an affiliate of the
same company? Probably for different tax streams as @Barrack has hinted. So
that Safaricom will also need a Banking License.
@ Kanini Mutemi, not only are the products tied together within Safaricom
but between Safaricom and other outside entities. I have a 4G Jamii Faiba
line, and the only supported payment option is Safaricom Mpesa Paybill. I
can imagine why businesses want to dictate payment options. For example, to
reduce fraud from cash handling, and also for security reasons where bulk
cash handlers are targeted by criminals. It is true this is changing our
consumption patterns.
______________________
Mwendwa Kivuva,
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