Browsing: Safaricom

South Africans will be amazed to learn that Kenyans pay Ksh4/minute, or about 34c/minute, to make a mobile phone call — and that’s one of the most expensive rates on offer in the East African nation

Vodacom appears to be about to lose one of its most senior executives, its SA MD Shameel Joosub, to parent Vodafone. TechCentral has learnt that Joosub is poised to take up a senior-level position at

Vodacom expects to sign up 10m M-Pesa mobile money users within three years. The telecommunications operator’s director in charge of the product’s launch, Romeo Kumalo, revealed the ambitious target during the product’s launch in Midrand, north of Johannesburg, on Tuesday.

Cellphone group Vodacom and its partner, financial services firm Nedbank, will launch M-Pesa, Kenya’s wildly popular money transfer service, in SA at the end of August. The two companies have set 31 August as the date for the product’s official SA launch.

Vodacom has lost one of its top executives to Kenya’s Safaricom. The JSE-listed cellular group announced after the markets closed on Thursday evening that its chief officer for corporate affairs, Bob Collymore, was leaving to take over as CEO of Safaricom. Collymore, previously a Vodafone executive, will join Safaricom in September. Both Vodacom and Safaricom have significant shareholding from the UK’s Vodafone. Like Vodacom in SA, Safaricom is Kenya’s largest mobile operator.

Nigeria has emerged as the shining star in MTN’s latest set of results, overtaking SA as the largest contributor to the company’s revenue in the six months to June. At the same time, the operations in Nigeria, which were considered by many investors