[Transcript] #6: Safaricom - How Kenya’s largest telco drove M-Pesa to become the most successful mobile financial platform in Africa
Transcript for podcast originally recorded on June 29, 2020
Hello well-dressed Afrobility readers,
As I mentioned previously, we will start to release transcripts of all Afrobility episodes to paid Substack members and below is the next one from our Safaricom episode recorded on 2020-06-29.
2023-07-16 thoughts: I love this episode! What a great foundational topic. We later explored 5-7 other African Telcos, but starting with Safaricom proved to be an excellent choice. This was primarily due to the company's ability to combine must-have needs (communication) while employing a business model based (pay-as-you-go) catered to low-income consumers. Additionally, their M-Pesa FinTech payments service shows the upside of ubiquitous financial services and the drawbacks of centralization of power which can hinder innovation. Enjoy!
Olumide Ogunsanwo
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Transcript starts here
[00:00:00] Olumide Ogunsanwo: Welcome to Afrobility, a conversation about African business and technology. Today, we're going to talk about Safaricom, the largest telecom carrier in Kenya. We'll discuss its founding. Early history, ownership structure, the M PESA story and impact, and then we'll end with its future outlook. This episode was recorded on June 28, 2020.
Banky, what's up man?
[00:00:26] Bankole Makanju: I'm good. How are you?
[00:00:28] Olumide Ogunsanwo: I'm excited to talk about Safaricom. I feel like I see that for every episode. Let's do some quick Kenya context before we start talking about Safaricom itself. Kenya has about 50 million people. That was the population in 2018. So it's the seventh most populated African country, is the largest economy in East Africa, and it's one of the big three markets for VC investments.