Revealed: How Raila’s boycott call cost Safaricom

Safaricom PLC registered a 2.8% in market share in mobile subscriptions to 69.1% in the first quarter of 2017-18 when compared to 71.9% recorded during the previous quarter, which has been attributed to the RESIST campaign launched by NASA leader Raila Odinga.

Raila led his supporters in dumping Safaricom lines and instead registering with Airtel Networks Ltd, accusing the country’s biggest telco on conniving with Jubilee, French firm OT-Morpho and the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) to rig the August 8 presidential contest in favour of President Uhuru Kenyatta.

As a result, between October and December last year, the market share for Airtel rose to 17.2% from 14.9% recorded during the previous quarter, the latest quarterly report by the Communications Authority shows.

At the time, Safaricom Dealers Association and analysts warned of the inherent dangers of the move that also targeted Brookside Dairy and Bidco, including job losses. Safaricom and OT-Morpho denied NASA’s claims.

Telkom Kenya also gained 0.6% to register a market share of 9.0% from 8.4% posted in the previous quarter. On the other hand, Equitel, operated by Equity Bank’s subsidiary, Finserve Africa Limited, lost by 0.2% to post a market share of 4.5%.

The market shares for Sema Mobile Services and Mobile Pay Limited remained unchanged at 0.0% and 0.2% respectively, the report says.

During the period under review, the number of pre-paid mobile and postpaid mobile subscriptions stood at 41.4 million and 1.4 million respectively.

Safaricom PLC reported a total of 29.5 million mobile subscriptions with 28.2 million being prepaid and 1.2 million postpaid.

The total number of mobile subscriptions recorded by Airtel rose to 7.3 million subscriptions from 6.1 million. This marked an increase of 20.7% during the quarter.

Telkom Kenya Limited registered 12.4% increase in mobile subscriptions to post 3.8 million subscriptions from 3.4 million recorded in the preceding quarter.

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Finserve Africa Limited registered a growth of 1.2% during the period under review to record 1.93 million subscriptions up from 1.90 million reported during the previous period.

Mobile Pay limited recorded 89,892 pre-paid mobile subscriptions up from last quarter’s 88,853. On the other hand, Sema Mobile Services lost its mobile subscriptions by 50.2 percent to register 112 subscriptions from 263 recorded in the previous quarter.