Speaking to journalists at a Nairobi Hotel, Safaricom’s h=Head of Business Sustainability Ms. Sandra Ojiambo says that the report “focuses on how Safaricom’s business practices make the lives of the network’s over 31 million subscribers better.”

This is going to be the eighth such report released by the telco giant. The report is a product of measuring the company’s activities against sustainable development goals. Though there is no specific regulation requiring businesses to publish such reports, Ms. Ojiambo says that making such reports public increases the firm’s transparency to the community it operates within.

This year’s report focuses on business ethics and risks, the regulatory environment, network, environmental stewardship and product, and service innovation.

The report also looks at Safaricom’s overall contribution to the Kenyan economy in the last financial year which it puts at Ksh. 601 billion, this is 9.6 times the value of it’s reported earnings. Most of these are long-term investments put into growing connectivity in Kenya.

Services like MPESA, Safaricom says, continues to deepen financial inclusion in the country.

With regards to job creation, Safaricom has directly supported 187,000 jobs and 978,000 jobs indirectly. This, Ms. Ojiambo says still falls short of the demand for jobs with over 1 million youths entering the job market each year.

“We need more big businesses to provide jobs and a business eco-system to be able to the growing demands for jobs by this youthful population.”

The Resident UN Coordinator, Siddarth Chatterjee says that businesses have to increasingly start adopting the Safaricom model of analyzing their own sustainability. He says such approaches by the private sector will help complement the government’s efforts such as the Big 4 agenda.

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