Kenya’s Safaricom, Ceo Bob Collymore and M-Pesa: Extended Notes from Keynote Address

Abstract

This article is an extension of the keynote address given by Safaricom’s chief executive officer (CEO) at the 2016 AFAM Conference. It provides details about Safaricom, Kenya’s leading mobile telecommunications corporation, Safaricom’s CEO, Mr. Collymore, and the iconic M-PESA mobile innovation, its sister services and the ecosystem in which it operates. We saw an opportunity to contribute to local management knowledge regarding an expatriate CEO doing well and doing good in Kenya, leading a national strategic corporate champion and driving transformational technological change in an increasingly important digital economy. Discussions of Safaricom’s corporate performance include the extent to which the corporation is going well … making money … and doing good … environmental, social, governance contributions … and fighting against corruption. Discussions of M-PESA include its origins, development, performance, its wider impact on Kenya’s economy and society and the socio-economic ecosystem that contributes to its remarkable success. We hope that these discussions will stimulate research and practice by way of theory development and testing, management and organization development, education and training.

Keywords:

• Safaricom
• M-PESA
• Bob Collymore
• Kenya
• mobile money
• Vodafone
• doing well
• doing good

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to acknowledge and thank George N. Njenga, Dean of Strathmore University Business School and Bob Collymore, CEO Saraficom for organizing and delivering the Keynote Address, respectively at the AFAM 2016 Conference. We also thank David B. Zoogah for his review and useful comments of an earlier draft of this paper.