Kenyan Economy shedding jobs like nonsense

[Nefertiti]

They don't need M-Pesa expansion 10 years this late. It legacy stuff now with razor margins. Fintech has evolved. They need to go Libra and such - new M-Pesas and new streams - which is what we imagined R&D hub was about. Satellites and blockchains is the path. Sticking to nimble spin-off model - like say M-Kopa or Little Cab startups. Clearly from Masoko and Alpha lab experiment the elephant can't dance.

I hope they don't let gok near it...otherwise it will die a slow painful death. Vodafone divesting allows Safaricom chance to divest abroad. If they get into Ethiopia - that will be huge - they need to do everything possible to be allowed to rollout M-pesa in Ethiopia.

[RV Pundit]

Nothing will replace M-pesa soon - in Africa. I think you need basic 101 on Appropriate Technology. Not everywhere is San Francisco. Technology is not hard - adoption is the hardest part. Telsa (original dude) was spinning out ideas last century - crazy ideas - that 100yrs plus - have yet to be adopted. Safaricom is not some startup - its a real business with real responsibilities.

They don't need M-Pesa expansion 10 years this late. It legacy stuff now with razor margins. Fintech has evolved. They need to go Libra and such - new M-Pesas and new streams - which is what we imagined R&D hub was about. Satellites and blockchains is the path. Sticking to nimble spin-off model - like say M-Kopa or Little Cab startups. Clearly from Masoko and Alpha lab experiment the elephant can't dance.

[Nefertiti]

Facebook, Libra and satellites are here now. Not futuristic stuff. Nikola Tesla invented alternating current - that powered the industrial revolution. Crazy ideas smh. You need basic analogy 101.

Nothing will replace M-pesa soon - in Africa. I think you need basic 101 on Appropriate Technology. Not everywhere is San Francisco. Technology is not hard - adoption is the hardest part. Telsa (original dude) was spinning out ideas last century - crazy ideas - that 100yrs plus - have yet to be adopted. Safaricom is not some startup - its a real business with real responsibilities.

[Nefertiti]

Actually come to think of it. Nikola Tesla's alternating current is still in use with no end in sight. While his archival Thomas Edison's biggest legacy - GE - is going bankrupt. Ideas outlast pragmatism.

[Nefertiti]

You need to understand disruption. Safcom did not invent banking - but merely disrupted traditional banking in Kenya. M-pesa is a TECHNOLOGY - it can equally die. It is a sitting dark - like a beautiful girl with a tumor - her smiles - aka the billions or millions of customers are nothing in longterm health or security. They could not hack TZ, DRC or Afghanistan - which shows you their limit. A mere Equity thin sim - such a small innovation - hived off 25% of mobile pay - and killed Airtel, Telkom and the drunken sailors. Bob Collymore sent emissaries to MP committees and high court - trying to stop Equitel - and lost. Pragmatic is right about global telco - Facebook simcard would obliterate M-pesa. Which is why MJ should be experimenting and spinning startups like his life depends on it. Noone is asking him to shut down M-pesa server - that another whack analogy - unlike your briefcase SOHO big company can chew gum and scale the stairs. Mpesa fees, data and roaming still cost an arm and a leg - zero-rate that and Safcom has no more muscle to hold up the closing R&D window.

Most of what you write is unwarranted attack. Safaricom has helped built ecosystem around m-pesa that has affected nearly all industries. From fintech to agritech - to solar or energy tech - name it - m-pesa is now the back-bone of kenyan economy. Kenya is still the global leader. That is not easy when you're a third world country - and you're shackled by Vodafone.

When you're managing such a responsibility - then you cannot afford trial & error - Safaricom main business is to KEEP MPESA ALIVE 99.99% of the time. The rest can come later. Kenya M-PESA last I checked was nearly getting to where likes of VISA & Master card are - in terms of volume of transactions. That is helluva BUSY BUSY payment system processing billions of transactions annually. In my current hassle - I manage our m-pesa systems - we are not big company - but we receive m-pesa payment nearly every second - that is like 80,000 Mpesa transaction daily - 2.5M every month - 30M annually - literally one m-pesa payment every second - huge responsibility to ensure the least possible downtime.

Nigeria tried your ideas of letting banks to run their M-PESA. EPIC FAIL. GHANA went kenyan model - and Ghana is pretty much second to Kenya now - I think Tanzania is not far behind.

Safaricom is now a 12B dollars goliath. That is not an easy fete,

I think they should focus more on growing M-pesa (M-pesa is just about started), then focus on data - FTTH ( Fiber to the Home) and 5G network -  they can eventually give you free calls - like now SMS are essentially free - I get like 1000 SMS everytime I buy data bundle.

They can future-proof their business by rolling out fiber to homes & 5-6G when you're out of home (nothing will beat that in near future) and being your banker (M-pesa). Those two will mean safaricom will be untouchable in kenya forever.

[Pragmatic]

Most of what you write is unwarranted attack. Safaricom has helped built ecosystem around m-pesa that has affected nearly all industries. From fintech to agritech - to solar or energy tech - name it - m-pesa is now the back-bone of kenyan economy. Kenya is still the global leader. That is not easy when you're a third world country - and you're shackled by Vodafone.

When you're managing such a responsibility - then you cannot afford trial & error - Safaricom main business is to KEEP MPESA ALIVE 99.99% of the time. The rest can come later. Kenya M-PESA last I checked was nearly getting to where likes of VISA & Master card are - in terms of volume of transactions. That is helluva BUSY BUSY payment system processing billions of transactions annually. In my current hassle - I manage our m-pesa systems - we are not big company - but we receive m-pesa payment nearly every second - that is like 80,000 Mpesa transaction daily - 2.5M every month - 30M annually - literally one m-pesa payment every second - huge responsibility to ensure the least possible downtime.

Nigeria tried your ideas of letting banks to run their M-PESA. EPIC FAIL. GHANA went kenyan model - and Ghana is pretty much second to Kenya now - I think Tanzania is not far behind.

Safaricom is now a 12B dollars goliath. That is not an easy fete,

I think they should focus more on growing M-pesa (M-pesa is just about started), then focus on data - FTTH ( Fiber to the Home) and 5G network -  they can eventually give you free calls - like now SMS are essentially free - I get like 1000 SMS everytime I buy data bundle.

They can future-proof their business by rolling out fiber to homes & 5-6G when you're out of home (nothing will beat that in near future) and being your banker (M-pesa). Those two will mean safaricom will be untouchable in kenya forever.

[Nefertiti]

Exactly Pragmatic. In Nairobi alone i see Cellulant, Bitpesa, Pesapal, etc. Fintech is a commodity now. Zuckerberg should not innovate but focus on keeping Facebook up per RV Pundit.

[Nefertiti]

RV Pundit if your day job is keeping 30m trx p.a. system running... you're a bigger joke than i figured.

[RV Pundit]

Exactly Pragmatic. In Nairobi alone i see Cellulant, Bitpesa, Pesapal, etc. Fintech is a commodity now. Zuckerberg should not innovate but focus on keeping Facebook up per RV Pundit.

You cannot innovate so much outside your core business unless you're some venture capitalist just throwing money around.Facebook will remain Facebook ..the core will remain.The day to day operation will weigh you down.Maybe only Jeff Pezo Amazon succeeded in innovating outside e commerce with AWS.. although it was out of the need to deal with Christmas load crushing their servers.Safaricom if they money can buy start ups...rather than wasting their time in an area they have little competency.They should just who is using their mpesa to make dough and partner with them or buy them out.The excess funds can be invested in fiber to the home

[RV Pundit]

RV Pundit if your day job is keeping 30m trx p.a. system running... you're a bigger joke than i figured.

I manage mobile payments in 10 countries dealing with several providers..then I manage solar pay as you go systems..making sure your mother can turn her solar light..then I manage back end services..for our mobile apps stack...lots of docker & K8s..we have like 32 servers although I manage only docker containers...we have devopps & infrastructure team but we are still a startup kind of with few hands on the deck...and I build all of these apis & syncing services..that is huge responsibility.We commit to be SLA of 99.5% so monitoring all that and having alerts firing before things go wrong is key.We were two guys in the back end ...the other guy PhD Msungu from ivy league.. recently quit so I am one man team doing all that.I don't build games with unity like you.I do real work that affect lives of 1 million of our clients...with dependants.. meaning the impact of my work is possibly 5-10m real people.Safaricom for context deal with 30-40m real people...not kids playing Minecraft like my daughter..or playing some data science analysis crap..and spinning crazy ideas backed by machine learning and AI..mumbo jumbo for tech witchcraft

[Pragmatic]

Pundit, you seem like a decent chap who can string together some decent output if you direct your energy with ambition , why aren't you running your own shop and employing the many youth looking for jobs! Instead you take a day job and fulminate to us about Hardworker Ruto. Is Nipate taking up too much of your valuable time to run your own biashara and asking us to join you and taking it to the next level?

Now you are talking; and exactly what Safcom should be doing. Someone said they have outsourced all their thinking and innovation including devops to Chinese and Indians such that these fellows are using Kenya as a test lab. Safcom doesn't own any of the IP and will be left holding nothing when the tide changes. In fact, Huawei now owns the M-Pesa IP after the so-called transfer of MPesa servers from Germany to Kenya. Soon Huawei will be replicating MPesa like services in markets where they have dominance.

Safcom should have grown their Cloud business beyond just being a hardware plant to be a large Cloud Services provider with AWS, GCP and MS Azzure come seeking collaboration with them as an african peering point. That is the problem of stealing someone pitch deck and not knowing the ultimate end-game and ending up not converting the real dream! Positioning for Cloud, SAAS, and cloud native apps is the way to go. Micro-services utilizing Docker and K8s containers and building open API's around this creates a viral ecosystem that can grow to another huge captive customer base that assures new business for the telco service provider.

I manage mobile payments in 10 countries dealing with several providers..then I manage solar pay as you go systems..making sure your mother can turn her solar light..then I manage back end services..for our mobile apps stack...lots of docker & K8s..we have like 32 servers although I manage only docker containers...we have devopps & infrastructure team but we are still a startup kind of with few hands on the deck...and I build all of these apis & syncing services..that is huge responsibility.We commit to be SLA of 99.5% so monitoring all that and having alerts firing before things go wrong is key.We were two guys in the back end ...the other guy PhD Msungu from ivy league.. recently quit so I am one man team doing all that.I don't build games with unity like you.I do real work that affect lives of 1 million of our clients...with dependants.. meaning the impact of my work is possibly 5-10m real people.Safaricom for context deal with 30-40m real people...not kids playing Minecraft like my daughter..or playing some data science analysis crap..and spinning crazy ideas backed by machine learning and AI..mumbo jumbo for tech witchcraft

[RV Pundit]

Pundit, you seem like a decent chap who can string together some decent output if you direct your energy with ambition , why aren't you running your own shop and employing the many youth looking for jobs! Instead you take a day job and fulminate to us about Hardworker Ruto. Is Nipate taking up too much of your valuable time to run your own biashara and asking us to join you and taking it to the next level?

Now you are talking; and exactly what Safcom should be doing. Someone said they have outsourced all their thinking and innovation including devops to Chinese and Indians such that these fellows are using Kenya as a test lab. Safcom doesn't own any of the IP and will be left holding nothing when the tide changes. In fact, Huawei now owns the M-Pesa IP after the so-called transfer of MPesa servers from Germany to Kenya. Soon Huawei will be replicating MPesa like services in markets where they have dominance.

Safcom should have grown their Cloud business beyond just being a hardware plant to be a large Cloud Services provider with AWS, GCP and MS Azzure come seeking collaboration with them as an african peering point. That is the problem of stealing someone pitch deck and not knowing the ultimate end-game and ending up not converting the real dream! Positioning for Cloud, SAAS, and cloud native apps is the way to go. Micro-services utilizing Docker and K8s containers and building open API's around this creates a viral ecosystem that can grow to another huge captive customer base that assures new business for the telco service provider.

I manage mobile payments in 10 countries dealing with several providers..then I manage solar pay as you go systems..making sure your mother can turn her solar light..then I manage back end services..for our mobile apps stack...lots of docker & K8s..we have like 32 servers although I manage only docker containers...we have devopps & infrastructure team but we are still a startup kind of with few hands on the deck...and I build all of these apis & syncing services..that is huge responsibility.We commit to be SLA of 99.5% so monitoring all that and having alerts firing before things go wrong is key.We were two guys in the back end ...the other guy PhD Msungu from ivy league.. recently quit so I am one man team doing all that.I don't build games with unity like you.I do real work that affect lives of 1 million of our clients...with dependants.. meaning the impact of my work is possibly 5-10m real people.Safaricom for context deal with 30-40m real people...not kids playing Minecraft like my daughter..or playing some data science analysis crap..and spinning crazy ideas backed by machine learning and AI..mumbo jumbo for tech witchcraft

Been there done that.Yes my big dream was to start my own businesses but I know the amount of sacrifices required is enermous ...I dont want to pull my kids from international School where company pays everything to kapsengere primary plus all perks that come with that..I know the drill of a startup... sleeping in the office so often is a must ..so I think for now that will have to wait.I think Safaricom should not get into start up mentality but Microsoft kind of buy ideas and branded them Safaricom.For  one successfully start ups you have a big graveyard.Safarcom cash reserve alone is more than 20b...money just idling in the bank.For example Safaricom saw sportpesa crashing their servers and should have bought them out..or got into a deal.

[Nefertiti]

You cannot innovate so much outside your core business unless you're some venture capitalist just throwing money around.Facebook will remain Facebook ..the core will remain.The day to day operation will weigh you down.Maybe only Jeff Pezo Amazon succeeded in innovating outside e commerce with AWS.. although it was out of the need to deal with Christmas load crushing their servers.Safaricom if they money can buy start ups...rather than wasting their time in an area they have little competency.They should just who is using their mpesa to make dough and partner with them or buy them out.The excess funds can be invested in fiber to the home

That's better. Core Safcom can do M-pesa expansion, fibre and all - but new startups must pop up fast and furious. The Google-Alphabet model. Time is really not on their side.

[Pragmatic]

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/23/business/paytm-vijay-shekhar-sharma-risk-takers/index.html

You cannot innovate so much outside your core business unless you're some venture capitalist just throwing money around.Facebook will remain Facebook ..the core will remain.The day to day operation will weigh you down.Maybe only Jeff Pezo Amazon succeeded in innovating outside e commerce with AWS.. although it was out of the need to deal with Christmas load crushing their servers.Safaricom if they money can buy start ups...rather than wasting their time in an area they have little competency.They should just who is using their mpesa to make dough and partner with them or buy them out.The excess funds can be invested in fiber to the home

[Nefertiti]

I manage mobile payments in 10 countries dealing with several providers..then I manage solar pay as you go systems..making sure your mother can turn her solar light..then I manage back end services..for our mobile apps stack...lots of docker & K8s..we have like 32 servers although I manage only docker containers...we have devopps & infrastructure team but we are still a startup kind of with few hands on the deck...and I build all of these apis & syncing services..that is huge responsibility.We commit to be SLA of 99.5% so monitoring all that and having alerts firing before things go wrong is key.We were two guys in the back end ...the other guy PhD Msungu from ivy league.. recently quit so I am one man team doing all that.I don't build games with unity like you.I do real work that affect lives of 1 million of our clients...with dependants.. meaning the impact of my work is possibly 5-10m real people.Safaricom for context deal with 30-40m real people...not kids playing Minecraft like my daughter..or playing some data science analysis crap..and spinning crazy ideas backed by machine learning and AI..mumbo jumbo for tech witchcraft

So you are  devops engineer - glorified IT systems admin. There are countless of you - probably a dozen Pundits run M-pesa at Safcom alone. I am the sniper - you are a marksman - you shoot melons.

The point  - you are a startup meaning you are nimble - fast paced, innovative, cutting edge, etc - not business-as-usual bureaucracy. Safaricom needs to pull an Alphabet - have umbrella company that manage spin-offs - startups like LittleCab, M-kopa, etc - while Safaricom as Google expand M-pesa and roll out FITH and such adjacent or slow innovations.

Innovaton and startups is not optional - it is a must for survival. The dinosaur must reproduce - mutate - or join the graveyard.

[Georgesoros]

Parker how is our dear pitiful KQ doing?

The other day I took the 14hr flight from NY. Services are good but theres always room for improvement. As I said most African leaders only look at their stomach. The airline had potential, which was retarded by previous leaders. Will the new leaders give this airline a new life??

[Nefertiti]

The other day I took the 14hr flight from NY. Services are good but theres always room for improvement. As I said most African leaders only look at their stomach. The airline had potential, which was retarded by previous leaders. Will the new leaders give this airline a new life??

No they will not breathe new life or salvage the situation. KQ problems are not caused by theft or fraud - but rather mismanagement or incompetence.

1. inefficiencies - cash hemorrhage, sub-optimal network, dubious codeshares, poor fuel hedging, misdeployed talent
2. competition - zero differentiation with rock-bottom prices
3. leadership - the Polish receiver manager's few past turnarounds and successes were a fluke. He doesn't why they worked ergo he can't replicate the success. I suspect MJ does know his telco profile is unsuited for the airline job

[Georgesoros]

The other day I took the 14hr flight from NY. Services are good but theres always room for improvement. As I said most African leaders only look at their stomach. The airline had potential, which was retarded by previous leaders. Will the new leaders give this airline a new life??

No they will not breathe new life or salvage the situation. KQ problems are not caused by theft or fraud - but rather mismanagement or incompetence.

1. inefficiencies - cash hemorrhage, sub-optimal network, dubious codeshares, poor fuel hedging, misdeployed talent
2. competition - zero differentiation with rock-bottom prices
3. leadership - the Polish receiver manager's few past turnarounds and successes were a fluke. He doesn't why they worked ergo he can't replicate the success. I suspect MJ does know his telco profile is unsuited for the airline job

EXACTLY!! My Friend. These things will take time to be worked on provided they have in good strategists. Yes MJ comes from a different background but all business strategies are developed from the same model. I believe is innovation is key in any successful undertaking. My favorite strategist is Warren Buffet.