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SAFARICOM PLC
From offering mobile telephony, financial services (M-PESA), consumer electronics, digital loan applications (such as M-Shwari), ecommerce, cloud computing, data, music streaming and fibre optic services, Safaricom has undoubtedly positioned itself as a giant in the technology space, with a user base of up to 43 million. In addition to being a pioneer in profitability, Safaricom holds a leading role in matters Environment, Social and Governance (ESG). In 2022, the technology company released its 11 th Annual Sustainable Business Report themed ‘Partnering for Growth: Transforming Lives’, with a focus on partnership that reflects the Kenyan proverb ‘sticks in a bundle are unbreakable’.
Guided by the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) released in 2016, Safaricom is making tremendous strides in the areas of healthcare, diversity & inclusion, education, climate action, renewable energy and the promotion of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). To improve access to affordable and quality healthcare, as of 2022, M-TIBA, a leading health financing technology platform enabled by Safaricom, had 4.8 million active customers, 4,731 approved health facilities and over Sh 1.5 billion paid out to approved health facilities.
In collaboration with Savannah Informatics and Intellisoft Consulting, Safaricom has developed Afya Moja, a medical records health portability platform to help patients achieve continuum of care. In total, these programs impacted 223,934 lives in the fiscal year of 2022 (FY22). Regarding promotion diversity, equity and inclusion, Safaricom has trained over 100 of its employees on sign language to remove communication barriers for the deaf employees and customers, while over 400 line-managers have been trained on leading diverse teams.
Additionally, together with Kenya Union of the Blind and AYUDH Kenya (a non-profit international youth movement), Safaricom has continued to register visually-impaired people, reaching over 13,000 in FY22, and has also distributed more than 2,000 white canes for the visually-impaired across the country in 2022.
On gender, through programs such as Women in Technology, Women in Leadership and Women in Business, the company is taking deliberate steps to grow its female talent and lift women-owned businesses in its supply chain. Safaricom is regularly expanding access to education through mobile e-learning, digitizing education content and promoting digital literacy. For its staff, a program dubbed #1MoreSkill has been created to enable digital upskilling and reskilling across the business, and in 2022, 90% of its employees had completed at least one digital learning course.
In April 2022, Safaricom partnered with Zeraki and launched the Zeraki Learning app to complement Shupavu 291- a mobile web learning product by Eneza Education and powered by Safaricom- thereby impacting an additional 150,000 learners who had downloaded the app by year-end. The M-PESA Foundation jointly with the Christian Blind Mission (CBM) Kenya and CURE Kenya hospital have come together to address factors that limit children with disabilities from access, retention and transition in schools. In total, 39 children with disabilities benefitted from surgeries, while 51 benefitted from rehabilitation and placement in learning institutions in FY22.
Safaricom Foundation’s Accelerated Learning Programme impacted basic literacy and numeracy skills to 25,271 learners in Turkana, Bungoma and Tana River counties as at April 2022. As part of Safaricom’s carbon offset program, 372,000 trees have been planted in FY22. The firm’s commitment is to grow 5 million trees by 2025, which should neutralise 26 percent of its emissions. Moreover, Safaricom has transitioned 310 of its sites to renewable and hybrid energy sources against a target of 4,200 sites by 2025. The firm has partnered with M-Kopa Solar for a pay-as-you-go model for device acquisition, achieving total sales of Sh 427,000, a growth of 145% year on year. The partnership provides access to solar energy to over one million rural households with an impact on 3.7 million lives and over 2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (tCO2) in avoided emissions.
In collaboration with M-Gas, Safaricom provides low income households in Nairobi with access to clean, reliable and affordable cooking gas. By the end of FY22, there were 10depots serving 185,000 households. 88.1 percent of solid waste collected from Safaricom operations was recycled in 2022. The company has also grossly reduced fuel (diesel and petrol) usage, from 11,652,174 litres to 10,034,899 litres within the last year.
In support of MSMEs, M-PESA mini apps provide a platform for third party service providers to offer their products and services directly on the M-PESA app, therefore easing the customer’s lifestyle. There are currently 36 mini apps with an average of 400,000 monthly users. Safaricom has also developed the M-PESA super app to cater for subscriber digital lifestyles and empower businesses, more so MSMEs, through the mini apps programme. Thus far, there have been 5.3 million consumer app downloads and 462,000 business app downloads.
In a nutshell, the Safaricom Group, under the insightful and futuristic leadership of its CEO Peter Ndegwa, is undeniably and on a massive scale taking part in the global movement surrounding sustainable business and social impact.
The corporate giant has set a grand example for other companies to follow, whilst still living up to its purpose of transforming lives.
