The real chink in Safaricom's armor is that they can't export their model outside of Kenya.  They can only access 40M users (population of Kenya) and they don't have the organizational capacity to scale to be a pan-African player (1B people).  Airtel, Orange, etc... are all thinking big picture about the next phase which is exporting all the ideas from Kenya to the rest of the continent and making Big Money.  

I think Safaricom is tapped out and will probably grow another 15-20% before plateauing and suffering from the Innovator's dilemma for an extended period.

I certainly wouldn't invest in them at this point - it's a one-country play that's already been played.

--

Kili - Cloud for Africa: kili.io

Musings: twitter.com/varud

More Musings: varud.com

About Adam: www.linkedin.com/in/adamcnelson

On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 10:48 AM, Grace Githaiga <ggithaiga@hotmail.com> wrote:

MPESA is simultaneously the strongest and weakest link in Safaricom’s portfolio.  Most subscribers stick with Safaricom because of the omnipresent nature of MPESA. Once a formidable competitor is found in that space, the invincible nature of Safaricom is bound to start crumbling.

Indeed, Safaricom and other operators know this and they have duly responded by offering to buy out YouMobile – an operator that was allegedly planning to partner with Equity Bank in delivering the mobile money services.  Equity Bank will therefore be forced to lease infrastructure from Safaricom, Airtel or Orange in their new scheme of things.

http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/blogs/dot9/Has-Safaricom-finally-met-its-match/-/1959700/2229774/-/e2nr18/-/index.html

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