Kenya’s leading telco Safaricom has revealed that it intends to ensure a huge percentage of the technology it uses is built in-house.
Safaricom revealed these plans at its recently concluded Engineering Summit held in Nairobi. The summit was the first of its kind. It brings together 300 innovators and disrupters from small businesses, large industry, academia and government realms in the Software Engineering field to explore the latest research, build connections, and spark innovation to meet Kenya’s future challenges.
‘’Therefore, to ensure sustainability and even achieve more milestones, we must create a training ground and grow a big community of software engineers. I believe this summit will not only be a platform for collaboration in terms of tapping into fresh talent, but also, it will create an opportunity for us to showcase our technology capabilities on the global stage, making us a powerhouse for software engineering in the Silicon Savannah, not just as Safaricom but really as Kenya,” said Peter Ndegwa, CEO, Safaricom.
Safaricom already has a number of products developed by its internal app including the Safaricom app and M-PESA app among other products. The My Safaricom app was launched back in 2016 and allows users to perform a wide range of operations including the purchase of data bundles, access to information on data bundle balance, redemption and transfer of Bonga points, and access to M-PESA statements as well as topping up other numbers.
The M-Pesa app on other hand was launched last year. With the new M-PESA Super App, Safaricom has basically brought front-end insights on customer spending, direct access to statements, and much more into one single app.
Last year, Safaricom also sought partnerships with software engineering firms to help build more in-house mobile phone applications.
According to a report by Business Daily, “The partners will co-create the software with Safaricom…the partners can then agree on a marketing and operations model,”.
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