When I said I was on the right side of life banking with Equity and using Safaricom’s M-Pesa, I was 100% sure of what I was saying. Now, the two giants have joined hands to make the most incredible service in mobile money worldwide, a bank account you can open, operate, save, withdraw, access loans and micro-financing and any other service within it just from your mobile phone. Not WAP enabled phones or complicated methods of getting that achieved but the world famous STK service from Safaricom, M-Pesa.

M-Kesho (I still dont get the name – M is definitely for mobile, Kesho is Swahili for tomorrow so combining the two…I guess its the future banking) is the new baby in town.

From my view, its a great product especially for the unbanked and those who find it difficult to access loans. While banking services are important, lots of Africans have no access to it due to poor infrastructure, lack for value of banking, processes involved in our banking systems, requirements and all that. During the short while that M-Pesa has run, its managed to handle more transactions in a day only in Kenya than Western Union handles in the entire world. It is proof that there is need and that innovation can be greatly used to improve the livelihood of the common man whose income is way less than average. So now you can open an account with only Kshs. 100 which is roughly about $1.25 and no operating cost. This for me makes up what we need to bring our economy to scale.

M-Pesa is serving over 10 million people in Kenya of all classes. That is where the mark has been drawn. I like what Michael Joseph has done with Safaricom and the fact that they are huge and not developer friendly does not make me like them any less. Safaricom has played its role in society. Thanks to Safaricom, there are more internet users in Kenya now.

That said and done, Safaricom can do better -  by working with local developers and allowing them to develop on their platform. Safaricom needs to learn from the likes of Apple, the success of the iStore is because each developer is given an equal chance. We can turn round Africa if only corporates were not as selfish as they are currently. Still on Safaricom, we would like to see you promote local websites in the same strength you are putting behind Facebook with the Safaricom Live brand. Lets hope someone from Safaricom actually sees and forwards this link to someone “BIG”!

Congrats on the launch to both Safaricom and Equity – BTW…none of their websites had information about this by the time I started to write this blog. Pull up your cables people!

Tigo Campaign

Mobile operators in Tanzania are at great war, price wars that is. When Tigo lowered its call costs to Tsh. 1 per second (1USD = Tshs. 1350), all the other networks branded it as the inferior network. Tigo is considered the village boy by the other players, its the only mobile network in Tanzania that has not bothered to sell expensive data plans, not bothered to improve its data platform (still on GPRS) and not even bothered to offer any corporate services to its subscribers and instead concentrated on the small consumer who is the majority. This concept has worked for them greatly, they have turned out as one of the biggest networks in Tanzania by subscriber base.

Zantel, a CDMA/GSM network which is leading in EVDO data services in Dar es salaam was second to introduce the 1 shilling per second calls and a 3.45 shillings across other networks. With a very small subscriber base compared to the other networks, this was not very notable even with really colorful branding, very well done campaigns featuring popular artists including Lady Jaydee (Leading Musician) and Nancy Sumari (Former Miss Tanzania & Miss World Africa) among others.

Early this month, Vodacom followed and introduced 1 shilling per second for Vodacom to Vodacom calls and went down to serious campaigns featuring AY, a popular Tanzanian hip hop artist. The most surprising thing is that in a week of this launch, Tigo hit back with a half a shilling campaign titled “Tigo Thumni” with calls from Tigo to Tigo costing only half a Tanzanian shilling, meaning a call is 30 shillings a minute, which is literally the cheapest call rate in East Africa coming to about 1.65 Kenya shillings a minute.

Zain which for long stuck to its “corporate” outfit, today decided to unveil its 1 shilling per second campaign, not an offer but a rate reduction on Zain to Zain calls. So literally speaking, Tanzania is officially the country with the cheapest calling rates in East Africa if not Africa generally.

Data rates are also reasonable compared to Kenyan rates with Zantel’s EVDO service being the fastest in Dar es salaam and only going for Tshs. 10,000 for 200MB and Tshs. 70,000 for 2GB, way cheaper compared to Safaricom’s 3G which is the only service that comes closest in Kenya to what Zantel is offering.

Tigo is also rumored to be launching a mobile money transfer service in Tanzania to try seal the wholes which have seen Vodacom’s M-Pesa and Zain’s Zap fail to hit the market as expected and reflected by the growth in Kenya.

While the call rates may be cheapest in Tanzania, customer care is worst in Africa here in my opinion, a shame because Tanzanians are among the most hospitable people I know.

Kenya also received the Government Leadership Award.

Zain’s ZAP mobile money service also received Best Mobile Money for the Unbanked Service which also includes its service in Kenya.

Africa is really showing potential in software and mobile innovations and this is a great improvement from where we have been in the past.

Get the rest of the award winners at the GSM World website

Well, Safaricom, thanks to M-Pesa, has done it again by scooping the Gold Award on the category Best Mobile Money Services for M-Pesa Money Transfer Service. Makes it the solo African winner. Below are the final winners of the Mobile Content Awards 2009

Winners – Mobile Content Awards 2009

Best Operator

Gold – Orange UK
Silver – CSL
Bronze – FREEDOM4 WiFi

Best Handset

Gold – HTC for HTC Hero
Silver – Nokia for Nokia 5800
Bronze – Research in Motion for BlackBerry Curve 8900 Smartphone

Most Innovative Business Model

Gold – Orange UK for Orange Dolphin
Silver – Spin3 for Mobile Casino Partner Program
Bronze – i-wood for Permission Based Mobile Marketing

Best Handset Application

Gold – Financial Times for FT iPhone Application
Silver – Alchemy Content / MSHK for Ministry of Sound Clubbers Guide to Ibiza iPhone Application
Bronze – Airborne Mobile for Homes on Mobile Phones Real Estate Application

Best Marketing Campaign

Gold – Samsung Mobile UK for Carphone Warehouse Interactive In Store Window Display
Silver – OgilvyOne for Kodak Snow Stories Mobile Application
Bronze – Clickatell for SMS Speech Excerpts to Global Citizens by President Obama (From Cairo to Ghana)

Best Social Communities and UGC

Gold – Utel for FOTOCHAT
Silver – aka-aki for The People Nearby Application
Bronze – Cellufun, Inc for Cellufun

Best Technology Innovation

Gold –  Movidia for MA1110
Silver – dotMobi for Instant Mobilizer
Bronze – DeviceAnywhere for DeviceAnywhere Proof Center

Best Mobile TV and Video Service

Gold – Vantrix Corporation for Media Profiler
Silver – QuickPlay Media for PrimeTime2Go
Bronze – Mobix Interactive for 3 on Demand

Best Mobile Game and Gambling Service

Gold – Spin3 for Mobile Gambling Software
Silver – Cellectivity for Bet2Go Mobile
Bronze – HeroCraft for High Speed 3D

Best Mobile Money Services

Gold – Safaricom for M-Pesa Money Transfer Service
Silver – Accumulate for Accumulate Mobile Everywhere
Bronze – Valimo Wireless for Valimo Mobile ID

Best Start-Up Company

Winner – eyeSight Mobile Technologies

Industry Personality of the Year

Winner – Pieter de Villiers of Clickatell

M-Pesa is what it is today because of Safaricom and its subscribers, the Kenyan People

This is not the kind of mood one likes to wake up with but I read an article yesterday by Olga Morawczynski (Whose page at CGAP gives a 404 page maybe for a good reason)  which she wrote for CGAP trying to tell us what we don’t know about M-Pesa, Kenya’s mobile money transfer. I feel obliged to say that his research (If any) is biased. Her findings are inaccurate and his theories incorrect. This article was published in July which means nothing much has changed since then.

I am here to talk about the role of Safaricom, the Kenyan citizen and the unseen push to the success of M-Pesa. Am here at the perception you have put up and the mentality you have created that M-Pesa is only for poor people. I may not be rich but am not poor. I am one of the millions of people using M-Pesa. I feel the racial divide here. If this product was implemented anywhere else in the world, it would have worked just as well, because its a great product. Because its an innovative product. In CGAP’s article base, there seems to be a big percentage on M-Pesa but most of it coming out as a poor man’s solution. I want to put out a few points here.

1. Safaricom’s role in M-Pesa was vital. Maybe because no one else believe in the idea enough to try it on their platform. If we go by Olga’s findings or insinuations, seems like Safaricom and the Kenyan people were being used as an experimental pad, we took all the crap and when there was success, here comes Europe trying to show how the success was theirs. Well, no one disputes the fact that they did a good thing, but we did too. I feel part of the M-Pesa success as a user – and it has been of great help to me. I feel insulted by this article, I feel downtrodden. Maybe I should ask how much money one has to pay to get an article published at CGAP on them – I guess the answer might be am from the poor Africa I cant afford.
2. Kenya was right for the product: The same product has been launched in Tanzania by Vodacom and almost a year later, its still to get off the ground. It maybe the people’s reception to the idea or the company’s marketing strategy for the product. Mobile money transfer in Tanzania has many players with 3 different competitors but its not as popular as it is in Kenya.
   
3. The European companies that came up with the idea to use Kenya as a testing pad for M-Pesa had just designed it as a Micro finance loan repayment solution. Kenyans made it a money transfer platform. Safaricom and Kenyans played the role of making them believe that it could grow as big.
4. M-Pesa has been beneficial to Kenyans of all classes, not only the poor as stated in his article.
   
5. M-Pesa was really popular in Kenya way before the post-election violence, so that did not play the major role described in one of your articles

In conclusion, I think this writer owes Kenyans and Safaricom an apology. Am sure she will get a glimpse of this article and I hope she does the right thing or responds to this article with his view. Africans have been over the years been used as research pads and its unfair, its time you took us for what we are.