It appears that Safaricom is finding difficult to find a suitable successor to deceased Bob Collymore. Kenyan based East Africa’s largest telecom firm and most profitable company, has been trying its best to rope in a high calibre CEO. But hardly have they succeeded in that effort. Safaricom started as a traditional telecoms provider of voice and text services. Mostly under the tutelage of Collymore, the firm aggressively expanded into data, broadband, infrastructure and financial services. The Collymore led corporation commands a market share of over 63%. His success delivered a nearly 500% increase in its share value as the firm brushed off the challenge of rivals. In May, the firm reported that its core earnings for the full year rose 13.1% to KSh89.6bn ($862m), driven by growth in M-Pesa.
A few months after his sad demise, experts say, Safaricom is finding difficulty to find a successor. Since the competitors to the dominating telecom corporation has formed an alliance to take on the company, it may not easy walk for the Safaricom henceforth because the opponents like Airtel and Vodafone are not just pushovers and they would try their best to wrestle a part of the market share from the company. Also, the telecom regulator is closely looking at the Safaricom to determine whether its shareholding pattern is in tandem with the law of the land. Any aberration from the established norms can attract a lot of legal wrangles.
In the meantime, the corporation is toying with the idea of hiving off M-Pesa, the cash cow of the organization to mainly to take on the combined alliance of Airtel and Vodafone in the telecom sector. Though consultations are in progress, nothing concrete has arisen so far.
Still more complex is the issue of the successor. It appears that the company had almost selected a candidate from another telecom company going by his track record and performance in turning round the companies. But the resistance has come from the Kenyan government since the selected candidate was a non-Kenyan. The government insists that the next CEO of the corporation should be a Kenyan. It may be recalled that Collymore was also a non-Kenyan.
