Investment Overview: Powering the Intelligent Economy

Safaricom PLC has announced a landmark commitment of Sh65 billion (approx. $500 million) to develop artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure across East Africa over the next three years. The announcement, made by Chief Enterprise Business Officer Cynthia Kropac during her keynote at the Connected Africa Summit 2025 in Diani, Kwale County, marks a significant escalation in the company’s drive to evolve from a leading telecom provider into a hub for AI-driven innovation (The Star, TechAfrica News).

Strategic Goals: Beyond Connectivity to Intelligent Services

While Safaricom is already renowned for its pioneering M-Pesa mobile money service and extensive 4G and 5G networks, this new AI push is designed to:

1. Enhance connectivity with ultra-low-latency networks and edge compute capabilities, ensuring that AI applications—from real-time health diagnostics to precision agriculture—can operate seamlessly.
2. Build robust data-center infrastructure, providing the horsepower required to train and host advanced AI models locally.
3. Foster a scalable AI ecosystem, where local developers, startups and enterprises can access the tools, platforms and expertise needed to innovate.
4. Empower the workforce, by equipping 5,000+ employees with AI fundamentals to become both users and creators of intelligent solutions.

Infrastructure Roadmap: From Data Halls to Edge Nodes

To underpin these ambitions, Safaricom’s Sh65 billion investment will be allocated across multiple infrastructure layers:

• Core Data Centers: Expansion and retrofitting of existing facilities in Nairobi and Mombasa to house high-performance GPU clusters, NVMe storage arrays and fiber-optic interconnects.
• Edge Computing Hubs: Deployment of micro-data centers in key markets—Kampala, Kigali, Dar es Salaam—ensuring that AI inferencing and low-latency services can be delivered within milliseconds of end users.
• Network Upgrades: Continued rollout of 5G NSA and SA sites, accompanied by software-defined networking (SDN) and network slicing to prioritize AI-driven traffic.
• Renewable Power Solutions: Integration of solar-hybrid backup systems to ensure data-center resilience and reduce carbon footprints in line with Safaricom’s Net Zero by 2040 commitment.

Partnerships & Ecosystem: Collaborative Foundations

Recognising that no single company can build an AI ecosystem in isolation, Safaricom is forging strategic alliances across technology, academia and government:

• Technology Partners: Early dialogue with hyperscalers such as Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure to co-develop AI platforms and managed services tailored for the African market.
• Telecom OEMs: Collaboration with Ericsson and Huawei to integrate AI accelerators directly into 5G radios—enabling on-site AI applications like smart metering, video analytics and autonomous drones.
• Academic Collaborations: Joint research centres with Strathmore University, the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) and Makerere University to advance AI in local languages, agriculture forecasting and public-health analytics.
• Startup Accelerators: Support for programmes like Zindi Africa and the Deep Learning Indaba, providing funding, mentorship and cloud credits to AI startups across East Africa.

Human Capital & Training: Building the AI Talent Pipeline

A cornerstone of Safaricom’s plan is people development. Having already trained over 5,000 employees in AI fundamentals—from data science basics to machine-learning model deployment—the company is now:

• Launching an AI Academy, offering accredited courses in partnership with Coursera, Udacity and local universities.
• Scholarship Schemes for postgraduate AI research, targeting underrepresented groups—particularly women and rural students.
• Innovation Challenges and hackathons, in collaboration with UNICEF and USAID, to crowdsource solutions for public-sector challenges such as disease surveillance and disaster response.

Sectoral Impact: AI Use Cases Across East Africa

Safaricom’s AI infrastructure will underpin solutions across multiple high-impact sectors:

• Agriculture: Real-time soil-moisture analytics, pest-detection via drone imagery and AI-driven crop-yield forecasting—boosting productivity for smallholder farmers.
• Healthcare: Point-of-care diagnostics powered by mobile-AI apps; predictive analytics for supply-chain optimization of vaccines and essential medicines.
• Finance: Smarter credit-scoring models for micro-loans; AI chatbots integrated into M-Pesa for financial literacy and fraud detection.
• Education: Adaptive-learning platforms that personalize curricula in multiple regional languages; AI tutors for remote and under-resourced schools.
• Urban Services: Intelligent traffic-management systems, waste-collection optimization and energy-grid balancing—laying the groundwork for smarter, more sustainable cities.

Regional Expansion: Beyond Kenya’s Borders

While Nairobi remains Safaricom’s innovation hub, the Sh65 billion commitment explicitly targets East African Community (EAC) markets:

• Uganda: Rollout of AI-powered agricultural advisory services in partnership with the Uganda National Farmers Federation (UNFFE).
• Tanzania: Edge-compute nodes co-located with Tanzanian Data Centres Limited to host AI inference for Swahili language models.
• Rwanda: Collaboration on smart-health pilots with the Rwanda Biomedical Centre, leveraging Rwanda’s Kigali Innovation City as a testbed.
• Ethiopia (via mobile-money JV): Feasibility studies for AI-driven fraud detection in digital payments, in line with the national Digital Ethiopia 2025 strategy.

Regulatory & Policy Environment: Navigating the New Frontier

AI infrastructure raises fresh policy considerations—from data privacy and cross-border data flows to ethical AI governance. Safaricom is engaging with:

• Communications Authorities in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania to harmonize AI-readiness frameworks, ensuring regulatory consistency.
• Pan-African Bodies like the African Union’s Digital Transformation Strategy, contributing insights to help shape continental guidelines for AI ethics and data sovereignty.
• Public-Private Forums, including the Kenya Data Protection Commission, to pilot regulatory sandboxes that allow AI use cases to be tested under controlled conditions.

Challenges & Risk Mitigation

Bold as it is, Safaricom’s plan faces several challenges:

1. Power Reliability: Ensuring uninterrupted electricity for high-density data centers in regions with grid instability. Safaricom plans to mitigate this with hybrid solar-battery systems.
2. Talent Retention: Preventing brain drain of AI specialists by offering competitive career paths, research grants and equity-linked incentives.
3. Affordability: Balancing premium AI services with the need for inclusive pricing models so that rural and low-income users can access new offerings.
4. Cybersecurity: Hardening AI pipelines against adversarial attacks and ensuring data integrity—through both in-house red-teams and third-party audits.
   

Future Outlook: Charting the AI Journey to 2030

Over the coming months, Safaricom will:

• Q3 2025: Break ground on its first AI-optimized data center expansion in Kibera, Nairobi; launch the AI Academy’s pilot cohort.
• Q4 2025: Announce initial partnerships with two leading cloud providers; unveil the first wave of AI-enabled enterprise services.
• 2026–2027: Scale edge computing hubs in Tanzania and Uganda; publish the inaugural AI Impact Report detailing economic and social metrics.
• 2030 Vision: Contribute to a digitally empowered East Africa—boasting higher GDP growth, deeper financial inclusion and smarter cities—anchored by AI solutions built, hosted and governed locally.

With Sh65 billion in AI infrastructure investment, Safaricom is positioning East Africa at the forefront of a global technological revolution—ensuring that the continent not only participates in but also shapes the next chapter of the intelligent economy..

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photo source: Google

By: Montel Kamau

Serrari Financial Analyst

29th May, 2025