Growth In Safaricom’s Signal Coverage Contributed To Sustainability Of Over One Million Jobs In Kenya
Safaricom is seeking to illustrate how it is using its business model to draw Kenyans in commercially beyond its capital telecommunications business. In the firm’s 2019 Sustainable Business Report, Safaricom portrays its role as an employer in the country with jobs secured adding up to a million and over in the last year.
Under the theme “Towards Reducing Inequalities”, Safaricom explains how it has integrated sustainable business practices and the Sustainable Development Goals into its corporate strategy and business model through its horsepower communications.
Safaricom has credited its growth in signal coverage for stimulating economic and social transformation by providing communication infrastructure and products that have in return enabled business growth and sustainability.
As both a leading telecommunication company and employer in the country, Safaricom is using this might to venture into different sectors such as environmental externalities; water and carbon emission, therefore, providing thousands of jobs for both the formal and informal sectors. Safaricom contribution to the economy went up by 11 percent after recording KES 601 billion; 9.6 times the profit earned in FY2018-2019.
Within the period under review, the telco grew the number of women-owned women-led businesses under the Safaricom Women in Business initiative from 1.7 percent in FY2017/2018 to 2.1 percent. This increased its expenditure on goods and services supplied by these businesses from KES 1.9 billion to KES 2.4 billion.
“Last year, we focused on the theme of Shared Value and highlighted how we had continued to expand our business approach to generate greater returns for a broader range of stakeholders. Building on this theme, we deployed a more advanced approach to our sustainability agenda in 2019, by focusing on activities aimed at reducing inequalities,” said Nicholas Ng’ang’a, Chairman of the Safaricom Board of Directors.
Safaricom At A Glance
With its headquarters in Nairobi, Safaricom currently holds a 62.4% market share with 31.8 million subscribers. The communications company now has 4,949 Network sites that provide 2G coverage for 96% the population, 93% and 57% population coverage for 3G and 4G networks.
The number of M-Pesa agents providing services across the telco’s business coverage stands at 167,083 with 1,200 transactions per second an increase from 900 transactions in 2018. Voice services both incoming and outgoing account for Ksh95.8 billion service revenue, M-Pesa Ksh75 billion, Mobile data accounts for Ksh36.3billion while messaging and fixed service recorded Ksh19.6 billion and Ksh8.1billion respectively. Safaricom has declared a 250.3 Billion annual revenue.
