Focus on Safaricom (The Executives who Left)

I want to try something new guys, I want to try writing about one topic: Safaricom. Why? Because I’m interested in the company, it being the chief tech company in the country and the one with the largest market cap of 640 billion shillings.

This will be in the same vein as John Gruber who primarily writes about Apple as a company: giving insights, thought pieces, and theories on the company. So that’s what I want to try do too. Unlike him, though, I currently don’t have sources in Safaricom of any kind but if I keep at this, maybe, I’ll get some.

So what makes me qualified to even write about Safaricom? For starters, I’m Kenyan and I use their products. Secondly, I read a lot about them and may be able to make connections that other people may miss, or not want to say. Third, I’m a techie and therefore able to look at things from that view. Time will tell whether I’m any good at it.

So for the first thing I want to talk about is the two executives who left the company recently. From the Business Daily:

“These changes have been necessitated by an appreciation that we as a business have become disconnected from our customers’ needs at various levels,” Mr Collymore said in an internal communication to the staff.

“These changes are necessary for us to be truly reflective of the demands of our customers and to prepare ourselves for the heightened competitive environment in which we are operating,” 

These changes are probably due to the fall out from the current bundles faux pas and also the competitions issues the company has had which led to all competitions the company runs to be called into contention. While there are probably other issues that led to them leaving, I suspect that these two issues brought things to a head and the two executives chose to leave. That’s just my two cents. Peace!!!

Update[26-03]: Two more executives have exited:

The telecommunications firm on Wednesday confirmed the resignations of Moris Maina, head of content and internet and Timothy Nderi, the head of contact centre.

Given this I’m adding that this may have something to do with this multi-billion shilling tender here. It claims that senior employees were bribed to favour one company. More on this in a later post.