@Kevin Great insight. I agree with you. The thing you left out is that Sonatel is part of Orange and Orange is strong in West Africa. The Analysts could have done a better job in talking about that potential. To my point:- Let's stop as a country beating down Safaricom on dominance and instead focus on how we as a country can help them become the Africa Champion and not defend foreign based operators crying foul about dominance when some of them were at some point ahead of Safaricom in market share. Let's instead focus on improving our champion by keeping them 'honest' in say the following areas:- 1. Improved Customer Service 2. Contribution to the Tech Ecosystem of which they are a part of 3. A Platform Agnostic M-Pesa that assists the regional payments ecosystem and improves on it 4. Positive criticism of MASOKO (which by the way is nowhere near what it should be) and ensuring that it lives upto it's promises of becoming the Alibaba of Africa Regards *Ali Hussein* *Principal* *Hussein & Associates* Tel: +254 713 601113 Twitter: @AliHKassim Skype: abu-jomo LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim <http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim> 13th Floor , Delta Towers, Oracle Wing, Chiromo Road, Westlands, Nairobi, Kenya. Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with. On Mon, Jan 29, 2018 at 11:34 AM, Kevin Kamonye <kevin.kamonye@gmail.com> wrote:

I am usually very wary of some of these talking head analysts and their opinions.

Safaricom is leagues ahead of Sonatel due to the underlying economic factors that differentiate Kenya and Senegal combined together with Guinea, Mali, Sierra Leone and Bissau).

*Country / 2016 GDP / 2016 Growth Rate*

*Kenya* 70.53 Billion USD ; 4.4%

*Senegal* 14.77 Billion USD; 6.6% *Guinea* 6.299 Billion USD ; 5.2% *Mali* 14.05 Billion USD ; 4.8% *Sierra Leone* 3.669 Billion USD ; 6.1% *Bissau* 1.13 Billion USD ; 5.5%

*Sonatel host countries total stats* Total GDP 40 Billion USD Total Population 52M Average Growth 5.7%

When we look at market penetration and market share, Sonatel already has some very high numbers - as per their 2016 reports. http://www.sonatel.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Sonatel_2016_financial_ results_EN.pdf

​As for the reports that indicate that Safaricom will suffer losses due to more and MPESA transactions being to business numbers - rubbish.

The biggest growth potential of African economies is in moving the informal sector into the scope of the tax administration. By enabling this, Safaricom is laying down the foundation for its own strong future growth.

Regards,

Kevin

On 29 January 2018 at 08:39, Ali Hussein via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

...

Listers

I’ve always advocated for Kenyan Companies looking beyond the country to Africa at least. Here’s an interesting story of Sonatel, the Senegalese Telco that seems to be making waves in the investment circles. A snippet of the story below:-

For Sonatel, there is an integrated regulatory and economic environment as well as a regional presence and availability of other Orange Group subsidiaries with which to have direct partnerships for purposes of remittances in SSA.

It also notes Safaricom is increasingly doing more transactions on M-Pesa that relate to businesses as opposed to withdrawals by individuals.

“We expect revenues to suffer as business transactions gain traction at a lower transaction charge than the declining withdrawals,” said Exotix.

Read on:-

https://www.businessdailyafrica.com/markets/marketnews/ Exotix-tips-foreigners-to-favour-firm-over-Safaricom/ 3815534-4282002-f8gnyuz/index.html?utm_source=traqli&utm_ medium=email&utm_campaign=bdafrica_newsletter

*Ali Hussein* *Principal* *Hussein & Associates* +254 0713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit." ~ Aristotle

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