SAFARICOM is among the most innovative firms in the telecoms industry worldwide, and east Africa’s biggest company. Incumbency has now put the Kenya-based mobile-phone operator in the crosshairs of insurgent rivals. The company is at the centre of a corporate battle that is being watched intently by the continent’s business and government elites.
Few firms have done more in recent years to boost Africa’s fortunes than Safaricom. It has built the world’s most widely used mobile-money network, called M-Pesa, bringing financial services to the poorest. Almost everyone in Kenya can send funds to almost everyone else instantaneously from any mobile phone (not just smartphones). The value of transactions flowing through the system is equivalent to about 40% of GDP. Its ease of use has made possible all sorts of other economic activity based around the exchange of small payments. It is now being copied in many other poor countries.
Still, even the greatest gift can outlive its usefulness. M-Pesa’s success is in part due to what economists call a “network effect”—its utility grows the greater the proportion of the population that uses it....
from The Economist: Business http://ift.tt/1eJfi7Q
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