Society

Part of our work to transform lives throughout Kenyan society takes place through investment by the Safaricom and M-PESA Foundations. The Safaricom Foundation 2018-2021 strategy is focused on building a stable and inclusive society. The three pillars of the strategy are health, education and empowerment. These pillars are further split into the following programme areas: maternal and child health, non-communicable diseases, technical and vocational training, improving learning outcomes and youth economic empowerment. Since its inception in 2010, the M-PESA Foundation has been keen to partner with Kenyans on large-scale, long-term, highly impactful social projects.

The Accelerated Learning Programme (ALP) is a partnership between the Safaricom Foundation, the Participatory Action Learning Network and ZiziAfrique to build foundational literacy and numeracy skills in struggling learners rapidly.

The programme targeted children in Standards 4 and 5 in 60 selected schools in Tana River, Turkana and Bungoma. Teachers and assistants underwent six days of training on the teaching method for the ALP, which focuses on play in each lesson and one-on-one coaching for the learners. A maximum of 45 learners are in each class and each class runs for an hour. Song and dance herald the beginning of the lesson, inviting the children into a place of joy while breaking down barriers between teacher and pupil. Students are grouped according to reading ability rather than age.

A 2016 report by FSG, a global consulting firm, showed that only 65 per cent of women and girls in Kenya can afford sanitary towels. Additionally, it is estimated that girls from disadvantaged families miss at least 20 per cent of school days in a year due to lack of sanitary towels, which severely impairs their academic performance and chancesof graduating. Accordingly, more than 800 000 girls sitting for their final year national examinations, including those in Kakuma and Dadaab refugee camps, benefitted from three months’ supply of sanitary towels, courtesy of the M-PESA Foundation. The initiative ensured that no girl would miss sitting for her exams due to lack of sanitary pads.

The M-PESA Foundation worked with local manufacturers to produce the pads, and the Ministry of Education to distribute them, at an estimated cost of KSh 281 million. The girls received a Menstrual Health package, consisting of three packets of sanitary pads (enough to last for three months), three pieces of underwear and a menstrual health information booklet, all enclosed in a drawstring bag.

The M-PESA Foundation Academy offers a platform for economically disadvantaged students from across the country, with learners joining in Form One offered full, four-year scholarships. This year the school has admitted 96 students into Form One.

The Academy posted impressive results in its maiden KCSE examinations during the year, achieving a mean grade of B-, with top student Abigael Kadogo emerging 16th nationally and all 91 candidates attaining entry grades to institutions of higher learning. Seven students are also currently studying in the United States after getting fully paid scholarships.

In January 2020, the M-PESA Foundation Academy launched an 11-month post-high school programme for its 91 Form Four leavers. The programme will be hosted at the newly launched Uongozi Center, located inside the Academy, will not only give the students an opportunity to define their career and entrepreneurial choices beyond the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations, but will also help prepare them for leadership roles in their various interests and sectors.

The Safaricom Foundation Afya-Uzazi Salama programme is a partnership with PharmAccess Foundation that focuses on improving health service delivery infrastructure, building skills of health workers, enhancing community-based information and education, and health care financing.

Through Afya-Uzazi Salama, eight of the thirteen community health units in Lamu County have been revived. Additionally, 220 community health volunteers (CHVs) have been re-trained on maternal and pregnancy care family planning, data collection, entry, and monitoring. Once dispatched, the volunteers complete their rounds and report findings every month to the community health extension worker (CHEW), who is based at the health facility.

Through this process, Garissa county was identified as having the highest prevalence and was selected as the first county for support. We partnered with the Pastoralist Girls Initiative (PGI) to address the issue in the county. In the first year of the programme, 296 children were enrolled. Children who may have never known what their affliction was until it was too late to save them. The next step was ensuring that the Garissa County Referral Hospital could perform as a beacon of service for these children. Work began in 2019 on the construction of a modern child-friendly diabetes Centre. Over the year 200 children have already learnt the critical skill of self-injecting their insulin, while parents have undergone supportive counselling to empower them with the information to understand the nature of the condition and the ways in which they can support theirchildren through active monitoring an dietary management. Sixty health care workers and a hundred community health volunteers were identified and trained on how to identify, counsel and care for the targeted children.

After the tremendous impact and success of the first phase of the Ndoto Zetu (Our Dreams) initiative last year, the Safaricom Foundation launched the second phase of the initiative in February 2020. Ndoto Zetu seeks to support individuals who are keen to make an impact in their communities through social investments. Kenyans who wish to participate in the second phase of Ndoto Zetu are required to nominate community projects that are related to education, health, or economic empowerment. Phase two of the initiative builds on the success achieved in the phase one last year, in which 300 projects across 40 counties positively impacted over 52 000 Kenyans. In Phase 2, we received over 4 000 proposals/requests, of which 328 dreams were selected to be realised and these are projected to transform the lives of more than one million Kenyans.

Building on the launch of the Africa regional team in March of 2018, we continued to mobilise business leadership in East Africa during the year, with a focus on advancing open government and responsibility in tax, protecting civic rights, unlocking capital for green business and creating leadership opportunities for women and youth in East Africa.