Six years ago, @PeterNdegwa_ walked into @SafaricomPLC ’s Westlands headquarters as the company’s first Kenyan CEO, inheriting a business whose traditional revenue engines were losing power. Voice revenues had peaked and were falling. Messaging had declined for three consecutive years. The company needed a new direction. He had barely met his team when the world shut down. In his first weeks on the job, Safaricom zero-rated M-Pesa transactions for close to nine months, set up and ran the Ministry of Health’s COVID-19 call centre, and upgraded 4G network coverage from 50% to over 90% work that would normally have taken years, compressed into one. Then came Ethiopia. In April 2021, less than a year into the role, Safaricom secured a licence to operate in Africa’s second most populous country. Total consortium investment has since reached $2.65 billion. The Ethiopian Birr collapsed from 57 to the dollar to 146, pushing Safaricom from a net cash position of KSh 3.54Bn when Ndegwa joined to net debt of KSh 139.81Bn by FY26. But the revenue question had already been answered. M-Pesa repositioned from a mobile money feature into the company’s central engine crossed KSh 100Bn in annual revenue for the first time in FY22, becoming the first Safaricom segment ever to hit that threshold. It has not looked back since. Six years. One CEO. A company completely transformed. 🔗 Full story — kenyanwallstreet.com/inside-…

Little Djibouti on the Horn of Africa feels there's not enough quality houses. What to do? Djibouti has broken ground on 7000 units costing a half-billion U.S. dollars to give more people places to live. "Salaam City" is intended to "improve the lives of ordinary people."