Safaricom
Safaricom PLC is a listed Kenyan mobile network operator headquartered at Safaricom House in Nairobi, Kenya. It is the largest telecommunications provider in Kenya, and one of the most profitable companies in the East and Central Africa region. In July 2025, the company was accused by Kagirison Research of involvement in international crimes, though such accusations never dimmed the record milestone achieved by the company in that month of surpassing the 50 million customer subscriptions ahead of its 25th Anniversary on October 2025. The company offers mobile telephony, mobile money transfer, consumer electronics, ecommerce, cloud computing, data, music streaming, and fibre optic services. It is most renowned as the home of M-PESA, a mobile banking SMS-based service.
Safaricom controls approximately 65.7% percent of the Kenyan market as of 2024 with a subscriber base estimated at approximately 47 million. In July this year, CEO Peter Ndegwa in a statement said that the company has surpassed 50 million customers on its network. He attributed this to the deep connection the company had built with Kenyans over the past two and a half decades. The company also recently hit 10 million customers in Ethiopia, where it entered in 2022 and has been expanding its regional footprint in the entire East Africa region.
In terms of voice market and SMS market share Safaricom controls 69.2% and 92.2% respectively.
Safaricom was formed in 1997 as a fully owned subsidiary of Telkom Kenya. In May 2000, Vodafone Group PLC of the United Kingdom acquired a 40% stake and management responsibility for the company. In 2008, the government offered 25% of its shares to the public through the Nairobi Securities Exchange.
Safaricom was ranked as Africa's Best Employer, 67th in the World by the Forbes Global 200 list of the World's Best Employers. In March 2018, Safaricom was ranked as the #1 company to work for in the annual list of BrighterMonday Best 100 Companies to Work for in Kenya, according to career professionals and job seekers.
In 2019 Safaricom partnered with Shared Value Africa Initiative to host the Africa Shared Value Summit.
As of 2020, Safaricom employed over 4,500 people permanently and over 1,900 people on contract. 75 percent of the company's employees were based in Nairobi, the Headquarters, with the remainder based in other big cities like Mombasa, Kisumu, Nakuru and Eldoret, in which it operates retail outlets. It has nationwide dealerships to ensure customers across the country have access to its products and services.
In November 2012, Safaricom partnered with NCBA Bank and came up with a "revolutionary" banking product, M-Shwari, which allows M-Pesa customers to save and borrow money through mobile phone while earning interest on money saved tapping into an underdeveloped financial services market.
Michael Joseph served as the founding CEO between July 2000 and November 2010. He transformed the telecom from a subscriber base of less than 20,000 to over 16.71 million during his previous tenure. In his last full year as CEO, Safaricom posted a 37 percent rise in pretax profit.
Bob Collymore took over at Safaricom in November 2010, replacing Joseph, who went on to serve in the telco giant's board as the Chairman. Collymore oversaw the introduction into the market of various mobile money products that have given the company leverage among its competitors. Collymore was also at the forefront in leading the charge against regulatory efforts to clip the company's wings due to its size and dominance. After a two-year battle with cancer, Bob, the longest-serving executive died on July 1, 2019, leaving behind a company with doubled user base and profits increased by 380%. Joseph was appointed as interim chief.
Peter Ndegwa was appointed as CEO effective April 1, 2020.
In January 2023, Safaricom made Adil Khawaja chairman of the board of directors.
In May 2024, Safaricom was affected by communication disruptions following the severing of submarine cables across East Africa.
In July 2025, a report by stated that Safaricom was involved in international crimes that adversely affected Amazon Web Services. The report covered the scope of these crimes and the managers involved in them. The report raised questions about corporate governance of the company, as well as highlighted concerns about the integrity of Kenyan institutions, especially its business press, law enforcement agencies, and regulatory bodies such as the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner.
History
service on 900 MHz and 1800 MHz. 3G DC-HSPA+ service on 900 MHz & 2100 MHz. Safaricom later launched LTE-A service in Nairobi and Mombasa on band 20 and band 3 in December 2014 and has expanded to other cities. Safaricom's competitors, Airtel Kenya and Telkom Kenya have expressed dissatisfaction with the way the regulatory body Communications Authority of Kenya, awarded Safaricom its LTE license to operate at 800 MHz.Safaricom was the first company in Kenya to possess 3G Internet technology with the recent success of 4G / LTE connectivity currently in all major Kenyan cities. In March 2021, Safaricom became the second network operator in Africa after Vodacom to launch a live 5G network, initially available in Nairobi, Kisumu, Kakamega and Kisii.
Flashback service (Please Call Me)
Most of Safaricom's network congestion emerges from a practice called 'flashing'. Flashing is the practice of calling another mobile user, but disconnecting before the connected call is answered. It provides a method for mobile users to alert someone that they wish to be called, but either cannot, or will not, pay for the call. The method is cost-free for the users; but costly in network bandwidth. That is why Safaricom introduced a flashback service that gave every subscriber five free SMS messages with a single predefined message stating "Please call me. Thank you". Although the messages can be annoying when sent just for fun they can prove useful when one is in trouble and has no airtime. It also gives parents more of a reason to get mobile phones for their children without the real need for getting them airtime.Kipokezi service
Safaricom launched the Kipokezi service in May 2000 that enabled its subscribers to send and receive email and online chat through standard mobile phones. The service did not require users to have an Internet connection as it used ForgetMeNot Africa's Handset Initiation technology. Prior to the service fewer than one in ten Kenyans had accessed the Internet but the Kipokezi launch allowed more than a third of the population to exchange email and online chat messages.Lipa Mdogo Mdogo
In partnership with Google, Safaricom introduced Lipa Mdogo Mdogo, a product targeting individuals with 2G phones by upgrading them to 4 G-enabled devices while paying daily installments of Ksh.20 over a period of one year.Ndegwa, the CEO of the company, pointed out that they were targeting 1 million customers with plans of rolling the service to other countries depending on its initial success.
M-PESA
History
An M-PESA-enabled mobile phone can also function as an electronic wallet and can hold up to KSh.500,000/=. Safaricom has announced that it intends to roll out M-PESA to other countries.M-PESA is a mobile phone-based money transfer, financing and micro financing service, launched in 2007 by Vodafone for Safaricom and Vodacom. M-PESA was originally designed as a system to allow microfinance-loan repayments to be made by phone, reducing the costs associated with handling cash. After the pilot testing it was broadened to become a general money-transfer scheme. Since then safaricom M-PESA brand has reached 12 countries in Africa and three countries outside the continent.
How it works
Once a user registers for M-PESA, they pay money into the system by handing cash at an M-Pesa agent, who then credits the money to the user's M-Pesa account. The user then gets an SMS notifying them of the transaction.A user withdraws money by visiting an agent, who checks that the user has sufficient funds before debiting the user's account and handing over the cash. An M-Pesa user can also transfer money to others using a menu on their phone. Cash can thus be sent one place to another instantly, safely and easily. This is in contrast to the preferred system before where money was sent by a porter, usually a friend, relative or bus crew, to the intended recipient.
M-PESA was first launched by the Kenyan mobile network operator Safaricom, where Vodafone was technically a minority shareholder, in March 2007. M-PESA quickly captured a significant market share for cash transfers and grew to 17 million subscribers by December 2011 in Kenya alone.
The growth of the service forced formal banking institutions to take note of the new venture. In December 2008, a group of banks reportedly lobbied the Kenyan finance minister to audit M-PESA, in an effort to at least slow the growth of the service. This ploy failed, as the audit found that the service was robust. At this time, The Banking Act did not provide the basis to regulate products offered by non-banks, of which M-PESA was one such very successful product. As at November 2014, M-PESA transactions for the 11 months of 2014 were valued at KSh.2.1 trillion/=, a 28% increase from 2013, and almost half the value of the country's GDP.
On November 19, 2014, Safaricom launched a companion android app Safaricom M-Ledger for its M-PESA users. The application, currently available only on Android, gives M-PESA users a historical view of all their transactions.
M-Pesa's usage and success in Kenya
M-Pesa has been particularly successful in Kenya, compared to mobile money platforms in other countries. Contributing factors here include the exceptionally high cost of sending money by other methods; the dominant market position of Safaricom; the regulator's initial decision to allow the scheme to proceed on an experimental basis, without formal approval; a clear and effective marketing campaign ; an efficient system to move cash around behind the scenes; and, the post-election violence in the country in early 2008.During the post-election violence, M-Pesa was used to transfer money to people trapped in Nairobi's slums at the time. Some Kenyans regarded M-Pesa as a safer place to store their money than the banks, which were entangled in ethnic disputes. Having established a base of initial users, M-Pesa then benefited from network effects: the more people who used it, the more it made sense for others to sign up for it.
M-Pesa has since been extended to offer loans and savings products, and can also be used to disburse salaries or pay bills, which saves users further time and money as compared to doing so from banks.
M-Pesa has a wide range of financial services including Person to Person, ATM withdrawal, Payments, Bulk Payments and Bank to M-Pesa.
As of January 2016, M-Pesa is used by 21.8 million Kenyans, with over 1.5 million of M-Pesa users using the bill payment feature. At the time M-Pesa had a network of over 90,000 agent outlets.
Average value of monthly person to person transfers on M-Pesa was KSh.106 billion/= while Person to Business transfers were at KSh.23.5 billion/= and Business to Person at KSh 27.8 billion/= per month.
M-Pesa is in partnership with a number of banks. M-Shwari and KCB M-Pesa are two such services, which provide access to savings and loans to users. M-Shwari was launched in November 2012 in partnership with Commercial Bank Of Africa.