Safaricom wants you to own a smartphone for as little as KES 20 a day

by Enock Bett · Published April 29, 2020 · Updated April 29, 2020

Kenya’s telecommunication company, Safaricom PLC has announced plans to launch a 4G smartphone financing program that will enable Kenyans to acquire smartphones for as little as Kenya shillings 20 a day. Safaricom said this when they announced their full-year company results for the year ended March 31^st, 2020.

The deal which is under Safaricom’s Lipa Mdogo Mdogo program is in partnership with Google and Teleone, and aims at helping about one million Kenyans acquire 4G smartphones. Safaricom says Lipa Mdogo Mdogo will help the common mwananchi who earn their wages daily choose from a range of smartphones that will be provided and pay in easy daily installments while enjoying all the benefits that comes with being digitally connected. The telco company is currently piloting this flexible payment project and will be launched by the end of quarter one in this financial year.

“Lipa Mdogo Mdogo will enable an additional one million customers to access and leverage the power of the internet,” Safaricom’s new CEO Peter Ndegwa said. “And we aren’t stopping there, we will use global trends and innovative digital enterprise solutions such as Big Data and Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to create new ways in which challenges are analyzed and solved,” he added.

Lipa Mdogo Mdogo is originally an advance airtime service from Safaricom that enables qualified prepay customers to borrow airtime and repay the outstanding Okoa credit in Installments. It was introduced as an alternative to the one that Safaricom used to deduct the whole amount to repay your borrowed credit before giving you another loan. By expanding the service to cover the purchase of smartphones, it is expected that the number of smartphone users in Kenya will rise, something we will be able to evaluate after it has been rolled.

In 2019, Safaricom sold over 600,000 Neon gadgets- 4G smartphones retailing for as low as KES 3,999. The mobile phones were introduced for customers seeking quality and reliable smartphones at affordable prices.