Safaricom’s foray in Ethiopia marks a good run for the big Kenyan companies during the Covid-19 pandemic. PHOTO | FILE | NMG Equity, KCB, and Safaricom (especially given word in the Nairobi corporate grapevine that Safaricom is eyeing a Sudan entry), and a few other big companies in the region, are dramatically expanding the outside borders of East Africa, even if they might not be deliberately doing so.
With the big Kenyan banks having already pocketed a chunk of South Sudan, these players are now all but set to try and lock in Middle Africa. They are the Trojan horses of regional integration.
After it was announced in Addis Ababa on the weekend that the consortium with Kenya’s giant mobile phone and money operator Safaricom had won the second licence to operate in the massive Ethiopian market, its stock price on the Nairobi Securities Exchange would go crazy on the first day of trading after the news. Its shares made the largest one-day gain on a single stock in the history of the NSE.
The soundtrack to that fortune was likely the decision a few days by Ethiopia allowed foreign telcos to operate mobile phone-based financial services, opening the doors for Safaricom to launch its money-spinning behemoth M-Pesa in the future.
Safaricom’s foray in Ethiopia marks a good run for the big Kenyan companies during the Covid-19 pandemic, with Equity Bank closing out acquisitions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and becoming the second-largest lender in the country, and KCB Bank also gobbling up the second largest bank in Rwanda, and a unit in Tanzania. Both banks are building big new offices in the Rwandan capital Kigali, to function largely as their hubs in Central Africa.
Money has always been, perhaps, the most important “second truck” driver of regional integration, after the formal political actions of governments (enabling travel, passing policies that make it easy to work, enable border crossings, and so on).
Equity, KCB, and Safaricom (especially given word in the Nairobi corporate grapevine that Safaricom is eyeing a Sudan entry), and a few other big companies in the region, are dramatically expanding the outside borders of East Africa, even if they might not be deliberately doing so.
With the big Kenyan banks having already pocketed a chunk of South Sudan, these players are now all but set to try and lock in Middle Africa. They are the Trojan horses of regional […]