If Kenya’s leading telecommunications company, Safaricom, was human and assuming all factors stayed constant, it would be preparing to join college soon having already received the nod from the authorities to get a national ID card, driving license, heck, even apply for its own mobile money service, M-Pesa, among other things.
Such is the imagery that strikes me every other time I am reminded that Safaricom has been around for 18 years. That’s a long time but it also seems like yesterday when I first saw a Safaricom scratch card with one of the big five showcased on top. I still remember seeing for the first time a brochure with the tariffs back in the day. Tariffic tariff, Saasa tariff… To put this into its proper context, it wouldn’t be until half a decade later, as I was exiting primary school that I would learn that the word “tariff” is also used to describe taxes.
The image of that banner with a butterfly and the words “with growth comes change” to herald the switch from the old 072 prefix to the new 0722 one, the one of the sliced “cake” Kshs 250 scratch card and many more are hard to erase from memory. As is that iconic Niko Na ad and many more.
What am I driving at? That 18 years is like forever and at times we may take it for granted just how far we ourselves, and not necessarily Safaricom or any other company commemorating 18 years of existence for that matter, have come.
To spread the birthday cheer, Safaricom has today announced a range of discounts for some of its products in a campaign dubbed Nawe Kila Wakati.
According to a reveal this morning at an event to mark the company’s 18th birthday as well as a press statement from the company,
- Safaricom subscribers (pre-pay) will get 18 minutes of talk time every day for Kshs 18, allowing them to make calls across local networks for Kshs 1 per minute until 12th December 2018. It is worth noting that the offer will be redeemable once a day for each customer and will be valid for 24 hours from time of purchase.
- Individual Safaricom post-pay subscribers will be rewarded with a 10% discount on their October bills, while Enterprise PostPay customers will also be rewarded discounts customized to their needs.
- Safaricom Home Fibre customers will enjoy 18% discounts when buying, renewing or upgrading their subscriptions between 1st and 18th November 2018. This should come in handy for some of us who are still recovering from the shocking upwards revision of our home internet subscriptions following the passing of the Finance Act, 2018.
While all the highlighted offers thus far are temporary, there is an exception in the form of a permanent offer. Going forward, all Safaricom subscribers will be rewarded with a free 1GB data bundle and a special Kshs 1 per minute rate for voice calls on their birthday.
“Additionally, Safaricom is making it possible for customers to reactivate expired data bundles by simply purchasing a new data bundle within seven days after the bundle expiry date,” reads part of the statement from the company.
