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Safaricom Sustainability Report 2016
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Kakuma in northwestern Turkana County is home to over
180,000 refugees, most of whom fled from their homes
because of the ongoing civil war in South Sudan and are
living in extreme poverty.
Chakula Chap Chap
, which means
‘Food Fast Fast’
in
Swahili slang, is an initiative that enables refugees to use the
M-PESA platform to obtain food from accredited distributors
within Kakuma. Instead of waiting in lines for handouts and
sacks of basic foodstuffs, refugees can use their food aid
allowance to purchase the food they want, when they
want, in much the same way that we might shop at a
supermarket.
The initiative has restored the self-respect and dignity of the
Kakuma refugees and created employment and business
opportunities for them within the camp.
Helping to keep Kenyans safe
Another partnership between Safaricom and the
Government of Kenya, and perhaps the biggest, has
been the deployment of the National Surveillance,
Communication and Control System. The handover of the
state-of-the-art system, which has connected 195 police
stations in Nairobi and Mombasa to 1,800 CCTV cameras,
was completed in November 2015. The system is a response
to the very real, and growing, threat of terrorist attacks and
we remain proud of our non-profit role in building a system
that will help the National Police Service to protect the
safety of Kenyans and to save lives in an emergency.
Seeking to transform lives
Other notable projects from the year include: our
M-Tiba
health payment system, which is already helping over 10,000
low income earners save towards their healthcare expenses
and receive donations; the Fertilizer E-subsidy programme,
through which 20,798 farmers have successfully redeemed
29,705 bags of fertilizer; and
Shupavu 291
, an SMS and
USSD-based education platform that enables students to
take quizzes, search for information and even ask teachers
questions in real-time.
Supporting innovative local entrepreneurs
We have always been a pioneering, proudly Kenyan
company and we remain dedicated to supporting
innovative local entrepreneurs in every way we can, which
is why I am pleased to be able to report that the venture
capital fund we set up last year has already borne fruit.
Exciting local start-up, Sendy Limited, which offers a
motorcycle on-demand delivery service based in Nairobi,
has become the first recipient of investment and we look
forward to seeing them grow.
The Safaricom Spark Fund is an expression of our
commitment to stimulating innovation within the Kenyan
developer community and I hope that we will be able to
announce further investments in other Kenyan start-ups in
the near future.
A year of transition and evolution
As I look back over the year, I am proud of our many
achievements and the way that we have continued to push
beyond traditional commercial boundaries in order to have
a positive impact on society as a whole. In many respects,
it has been a year of transition as we have embedded our
new strategy and regionalised our structure, but I believe
that both of these tasks have been largely completed and
I look forward to reaping the benefits of this evolution in the
year ahead.
In closing, I am satisfied with our progress overall, but I
remain convinced that we can do a lot more to address
emerging sustainability issues faster and to ensure that
sustainability is even more deeply and meaningfully
integrated into our personal values and daily functions. In
this regard, I am excited about the prospect of using the
recently launched Sustainable Development Goals to help
us achieve this ambition and I look forward to reporting on
our progress in this regard next year.
Bob Collymore
Chief Executive Officer, Safaricom Limited
“I am satisfied with our progress
overall, but I remain convinced
that we can do a lot more to
address emerging sustainability
issues faster and to ensure
that sustainability is even more
deeply and meaningfully
integrated into our personal
values and daily functions.”