From sports to M-pesa, Kenya is a trendsetter

By Daniel Wesangula

Kenya: As Kenya celebrates her 50th anniversary, it won’t hurt to look back at what the country has offered the world.

From the beautifully different landscapes to revolutionary mobile technology services, Kenya stands tall among the world’s nations, for contributing to global good and betterment of the human race.

Imagine a world where the need for hard currency in one’s pocket is redundant. A world in which one only needs a cellphone, and official government registration to buy goods, send money, pay bills and even purchase a bus ticket.

Well, it does not need much of an imagination for this, since the mobile money transfer service M-pesa, already enabled this and revolutionised the way Kenyans do business.

Launched in early 2006, M-Pesa currently transfers more than Sh70 billion monthly.

The initial concept was to create a service allowing small-scale borrowers to conveniently receive and repay loans using the network of mobile service provider Safaricom airtime resellers. This would enable microfinance institutions offer more competitive loan rates to their users, as costs are lower than when dealing in cash. The service users would gain through being able to track their finances more easily.

23 million subscribers

But since then, M-Pesa is a branchless banking service, designed to enable users complete basic banking transactions without visiting a bank. The continuing success of M-Pesa in Kenya has been due to the creation of a highly popular, affordable payment service with limited involvement of a bank.

Currently, together with a sister application, M-Shwari, it has more than 23 million subscribers. M-Shwari is a new banking platform that allows subscribers of Kenya’s biggest mobile network, Safaricom, to operate savings accounts, earn interest on deposits, and borrow money using their mobile phones.

Save and borrow

Now it is hoped the new M-Shwari application — meaning “no hassle” — can do for savers and borrowers what M-Pesa did to the people, economy and day-to-day lives of not only Kenyans, but also millions of people worldwide.

For decades Kenyans have ruled the world’s biggest and most lucrative marathons. For instance, in the prestigious New York Marathon, Kenyan male runners have won 10 of the events since 1990. Over the same period, women have won the event on seven occasions.

At the feet of Kenyans, records have tumbled and unassailable ones set. From the first generation of runners like Naftali Temu who announced our presence onto the world stage to the current crop of wind chasers such as Vivian Cheruiyot, prodigy Eunice Sum, the ever smiling and dancing Ezekiel Kemboi to the powerhouse David Rudisha, we continue to rule the middle and long distance running. Save from the periodical upset by rivals Ethiopia, Kenyans are in a class of their own.

And even then, our runners seldom get upset at loss; they know victory will be theirs in the next race, as Kipchoge Keino was once quoted: “As a sportsman, I accept being beaten. Everybody tries to be a winner, but only one in a race will win. It’s fun to win. But I don’t find unhappiness if I lose.”

The big secret

The good news is that thousands of athletes worldwide troop to Kenya annually to find out the secret behind our successful running. “People come to find the secret, but you know what the secret is? That you think there’s a secret. There is no secret,” Brother Colm O’Connell says in Running with the Kenyans, a book by Adharanand Finn on Kenya’s champion runners.

The world over, Kenya’s capital Nairobi stands among the few, if not the only capital city that has a national park near it with all the Big Five easily sighted.

According to the Kenya Wildlife Service, the park is a unique ecosystem by being the only protected area in the world close to a capital city. The park is located only 7km from the city.

The savannah ecosystem comprises of different vegetation types. Open grass plains with scattered acacia bush are predominant. The western side has a highland dry forest and a permanent river with a riverine forest.

To the south are the Athi-Kapiti Plains and Kitengela migration corridor, which are important wildlife dispersal areas during the rain season.