Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore plans to focus on growing the firm’s agribusiness and e-commerce platforms to boost revenue during his last year at the helm of the company.
Safaricom currently has about one million farmers signed onto the platform.
“I want to get that closer to five million farmers by this time next year because that is how you transform the lives of Kenya’s small-scale farmers,” he said.
Collymore will remain as Safaricom boss for the next 12-15 months to compensate time spent while he was away on sick leave.
He took a nine-month medical leave in late 2017 to return to his native England home to battle cancer and has now indicated he will complete his tenure around August 2020.
Initially, the CEO was set to step down this August for health reasons.
“I actually owe the company about a year, because I was sick for a year,” he said. “There’s a lot of stuff that I didn’t do and in the next 12-15 months i’m here for, we definitely want to get e-commerce working much better than it is so far.”
Collymore has helped to build Safaricom into East Africa’s most profitable company, thanks to the popular mobile money transfer service M-Pesa and a growing customer base.
Safaricom, which is 35 per cent owned by South Africa’s Vodacom, controls about 62 per cent of Kenya’s mobile market, with 30 million subscribers. Britain’s Vodafone has a five per cent stake and the Kenyan government 35 per cent.
During his tenure, Safaricom’s share price has increased by more than 400 per cent to Sh26.2 at the close of NSE. He has also led the charge against regulatory efforts to clip the company’s wings due to its dominant size.
Earlier this month, Health CS Sicily Kariuki appointed him as board member of the National Cancer Institute.
