Message From Our CEO

It gives me great personal satisfaction to welcome the publication of this report. Sustainability is an ongoing process for Safaricom, and this report marks an important benchmark for us as a company. As a responsible corporate citizen, the imperative exists to bring our performance into focus and transparently benchmark ourselves. We wanted to do this to start an honest conversation about sustainability with our community of stakeholders.

As a company with a reputation for enthusiastically leading the way, it also seems appropriate that we are one of the few Kenyan companies to report on sustainability using the rigorous Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines and the United Nations Global Compact Communication on Progress.

On that note, I was honoured to be appointed to the Board of the United Nations (UN) Global Compact in April this year. The appointment underscores our commitment to the initiative’s goals of encouraging businesses globally to adopt sustainable and socially responsible policies, to support the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, and to adhere to human rights, good labour practices, support for the environment and anti-corruption.

My priorities for the year ahead are to:

• continue to improve working conditions for our employees;
• ensure that we, and our partners, operate to the highest governance and ethical standards;
• develop solutions that help address Kenya’s educational, health and agricultural challenges;
• improve accessibility to our services for customers with special needs, and
• continue to minimise the impact our operations have on the environment.