NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Last week Safaricom, the largest mobile service provider in East and Central Africa, suffered a serious disruption to its services.

My guess about how Safaricom’s exclusive success story might present a huge risk to the Kenyan economy came to pass.

No doubt Safaricom, the mother of the legendary mobile money service M-Pesa, has brought accolades to Kenya, both here and abroad and we hope it continues to do so.

However, for more than three hours last week, Safaricom services sneezed and the Kenyan socio-economic fabric caught a cold and underwent serious distress.