6 YEARS AFTER LEAVING SAFARICOM

Getting back home after 3 years in Lagos was no mean fete. I have grown as a person, a lot of things in my life make more sense than they did 3 years ago.  M-PESA was all lived for back then,  thanks to Safaricom. Safaricom was a learning pad but i have learnt and grown. Its not a place to stay any longer after your learnings. M-PESA was great and continues to be.

Yes I am back by choice. Globacom taught me so much. Thank you so much Cesar Camara, Nicholas Eneje, Adewale Sangowawa and not forgetting the mighty bull.. Dr Mike Adenuga Jnr. Your teachings  and how you run your company might not be so attractive in the beginning but whoever learns the true lesson of who you want to be..becomes better much better after Globacom. I never had fairy tale dream house or a car.  But the lessons learnt at Glo made me who I am today. To Globacom and Dr Adenuga, I salute you! Thank you for changing my life forever, financially, mentally am well rounded to face the world. You removed the fear from me… I face the world courageously.

Back to Kenya, I see things more clearly, the con games, the users, the business opportunities, the friends and the foes. I have learnt when to stay and when to run.  Despite the huge M-PESA success, both agents and customers have enjoyed what we created years ago. But just like Kanu…. slowly but surely a revolution is inevitable in terms of new mobile money deployments. Kenyans are disgruntled but i guess they are pretty used to taking what they have and shutting up. Safaricom knows this and therefore does not care much.
I got a bit shocked when 6 years after leaving M-PESA  an agent calls me asking for my help. I jogged my mind and took them through the M-PESA system and they were able to sort out a simple problem of the Primary till. I asked myself, if this small problem took my effort to resolve… what exactly are agents going through?

Time to do something about this.This is not the vision we had for the Kenyan people. Agents sound like beggars. I call them ” The safaricom Investor Beggars”

Will talk about these beggars in another day, another time..for now, time to deliver a true financial inclusion platform to the Kenyans. It will not matter which network you will be in or whether you are offline or online. You will be able to Send money, pay your bills , bank your money, and all you ever dreamt of…

Till then… its my opinion as usual

Karimi Gichunge

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