Safaricom announced plans to become a technology company by the year 2025.
Under its new strategy dubbed “Twende Tukiuke”, the mobile telephony firm says it will target key sectors such as agriculture, health and education with innovative technology offerings.
The giant telco customers will also enjoy an array of offers from free calls to free data through the next 30 days as part of its 20th anniversary celebrations.
It has been two decades since Safaricom entered the Kenyan market as a mobile phone service provider.
Safaricom is the market leader, with 35.6 million customers and nearly 25 million customers on its m-pesa money transfer platform.
And as the telco marked its 20th anniversary on October 27, the company’s Chief Executive Officer Peter Ndegwa said the next phase of safaricom’s growth will be driven by its vision to become a purpose-led technology company by 2025.
“We want to be a tech-oriented org we want to go into agriculture, health and education to empower these societies. We want to change the trajectory of growth.”Said Ndegwa.
Ndegwa further said the company plans to launch enhanced financial service and connectivity products in support of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), which form the majority of enterprises in Kenya.
“We want to give SMEs more control. We know SMEs have combined individual and personal transactions. We want to launch an app we are calling ‘pochi la biashara’ to help separate these two to give them more control.” He added.
In its 20th anniversary fete, Safaricom also lined up a number of offers to its over 35 million customers over the next 30 days.
The company also plans to achieve a hundred percent 4th generation (4G) coverage across the country by 2020.
This coming on the back of Safaricom’s launch of a gadget financing scheme, ‘lipa mdogo mdogo’ to enable customers to acquire 4G ready devices. However, the company plans to upgrade the phone purchase
