Safaricom to set up Sh3bn M-Pesa Academy in Thika

Telecommunications company Safaricom is building a school that will accommodate up to 1,000 needy students, joining a growing list of blue chip companies that are spending billions of shillings to educate disadvantaged children.

The secondary school, dubbed M-Pesa Academy, will be built on a 50-acre piece of land in Thika.

“The project cost is just shy of Sh3 billion,” said Safaricom chief executive Bob Collymore in an interview.

Construction has already started and the school is targeted for completion early next year. Safaricom is expected to hold an official launch for the institution, which will be fashioned on the Starehe Boys Center model that admits needy but bright students who pay minimal or no fees.

Besides classrooms and accommodation blocks, the school will also have a conference facility.

“We will have a farm at the academy where students will grow some of the food that will be consumed at the institution,” said Mr Collymore.

Safaricom is Kenya’s most profitable company and the most valuable at the Nairobi Securities Exchange. It reported a net profit of Sh14.7 billion in the six months through September 2014 from Sh11.3 billion a year earlier.

Several firms, especially banks, have poured billions of shillings in recent years on corporate social responsibility initiatives that have focused mainly on putting students through secondary school.

Co-operative Bank early this month announced that it will spend more than Sh100 million to pay school fees for about 655 students. Equity Bank’s Wings to Fly programme picked 2,000 students this year, whose education will be financed for the next four years.

The Wings to Fly project is a Sh9 billion fund with the backing of partner firms such as the MasterCard Foundation, USAid, UKaid and the German Reconstruction Bank.

KCB has also announced that it will spend Sh100 million to sponsor 238 students from poor backgrounds who sat for their Kenya Certificate of Primary Education examinations last year.

The initiatives by Co-op, Equity and KCB cover school fees for four years as well as uniforms, stationery, toiletries and pocket money.

READ: Equity, Co-op and KCB spend billions on students’ fees

The M-Pesa Academy will be built and owned by the M-Pesa Foundation, a charity organisation established by Safaricom in 2010.

The trust is an autonomous entity run by interest income generated from M-Pesa’s multi-billion shilling deposits held by commercial banks. M-Pesa Holding is the mobile money payments business unit of Safaricom.

M-Pesa has won global accolades for its impact on the economy and easing access to financial services especially among the unbanked population.

The M-Pesa Foundation says the academy is in line with its philosophy of investing in massive, long-term projects in education, environment and health.

“As part of our on-going commitment to build sustainable education options for future generations, the M-Pesa Foundation will be investing in the development of a state-of-the-art educational facility in Kenya,” said Les Baillie, executive director of the M-Pesa Foundation.

Safaricom says the school will admit students from all over the country and will have a unique education approach to teaching.

Mr Collymore, however, said they have not yet settled on how the selection will be carried out.

“Driven by entrepreneurial leadership, technology and an innovative way of delivering the KCSE curriculum, the academy will primarily serve gifted but needy students with demonstrated leadership potential,” said Mr Baillie.

The latest Central Bank data shows that Sh2.1 trillion was moved last year through mobile money.

M-Pesa is the biggest mobile money transfer business in terms of volumes of cash moved. Other players in the market are Orange Money, Airtel Money, Elma by local banking software firm Craft Silicon, Tangaza and MobiKash.

Yu also operated a similar service by the name YU Cash before it sold its business to Safaricom and Airtel. Equity Bank is also planning to launch its thin-SIM mobile money transfer service, which has been delayed due to court cases objecting to the technology it intends to deploy.

The M-Pesa model is currently being implemented in other economies in Africa and around the world.

Apart from education, the M-Pesa Foundation is also keen on funding innovation. In 2013, the foundation financed a local mobile-based technology called M-Farm to the tune of Sh20 million.

M-Farm links farmers to the market place using mobile phone and other web-based applications.

“At the M-Pesa foundation, our goal is to impact communities in direct ways through support for community projects,” said Mr Baillie.