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Ep 97 – The big trends in BSS with Appledore Research
John Abraham from Appledore Research discusses how vendors and operators are applying GenAI in their business, major BSS trends, and how the cost of AI can be justified by real business outcomes.
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Ep 98 – Safaricom: On the hunt for revenue
This week’s guest
Fawzia Ali
Chief Consumer Business Officer Safaricom PLCIn 2007, Safaricom PLC (Safaricom) and Vodafone invented M-PESA, a mobile payment system that has transformed financial services in Kenya and beyond by bringing banking capabilities to unbanked populations. M-PESA has become a cornerstone of the Kenyan economy and helped Safaricom build a reputation for innovation.
In this episode, I’m talking with Fawzia Ali, chief consumer business officer at Safaricom. We discuss the success of M-PESA, the company’s efforts to use AI and machine learning for continued innovation, and how it’s preparing its workforce for an AI-driven future. Listen now to hear:
- How M-PESA simplicity and wide distribution changed the game for unbanked populations [02:12];
- How Safaricom is using AI and ML to create hyper-personalized plans [06:52];
- The power of starting with small cohorts of customers and iterating quickly [09:45]; and
- How Safaricom is boosting employees’ AI know-how and fostering a culture of AI innovation [13:00].
Links and resources
- In 2015, American television news show 60 Minutes told the story of M-PESA’s success, and in June of this year, Forbes continued the story with the article, M-PESA: Why the world’s first large mobile payment platform keeps on winning.
- Earlier this year, Fawzia wrote an article for Marketing Africa Magazine called Learn, Unlearn, Relearn about the importance of setting personal and professional goals and learning new skills. Look for it on page 8.
- Ready to unlock the power of your data and supercharge your customer experience? Listen to my MWC23 MVNO Summit Talk, SUPERCHARGE your MVNO with personalization, where I talk about how you can use ML and hyper-personalization to drive new revenue.
- Fawzia and I both have a special relationship with shoes, and she’s even talked about her passion for them in this video from Engage+.
- My go-to shoes are Golden Goose mid-stars: They have wingtip styling like a man’s business shoe. They’re my “business sneaker.”
- Watch this episode on our YouTube channel.
- You can find the episode transcript here.
Wanna talk AI and public cloud? Telco execs, set up a meeting with our team to learn how to tap the immense business value it can bring.
Guest bio
Fawzia Ali is a transformational commercial leader in the FMCG and telecommunications sectors, currently serving as the chief consumer business officer at Safaricom PLC, a leading technology company in Africa. With an impressive track record of success and a deep understanding of the ever-evolving consumer landscape, Fawzia plays a pivotal role in shaping Safaricom’s customer-centric strategy and driving the company’s growth in the competitive technology sector. She leads a diverse and talented team focused on creating value for Safaricom’s customers.
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The Telco in 20 podcast won 2024 and 2022 Hermes Awards, 2023 and 2022 MarComm Awards, and was recognized as a TeckNexus Top 12 Telco and Tech Podcast, Forrester Top 100 Channel Podcast and Feedspot Top 10 Telecom Podcast. If you enjoy the podcast, would you leave us a short review? It takes you seconds to do in your app and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. And I love reading your feedback and reviews!
Podcast credits
- Executive Producer and Host: Danielle Rios, TelcoDR
- Senior Producer: Lindsay Grubb, TillCo Media
- Senior Editor/Brand Manager: Alisa Jenkins, Springboard Marketing
- Audio Editor: Andrew Condell
- Supervising Producer: Amanda Avery
- Associate Producer: Kriselda Dionisio
- Music: Dyami Wilson
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Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is M-PESA and why has it been so successful in Kenya?
M-PESA is a mobile payment system invented by Safaricom and Vodafone in 2007 that transforms feature phones into portable banks. It allows users to transfer money as easily as sending a text message, serving Kenya’s previously unbanked population. Its success stems from understanding a real societal need, keeping the technology simple enough to work on 2G phones, creating wide distribution with over 250,000 agents, opening the platform to 70,000+ developers through APIs, and operating in a supportive regulatory environment. Today, 59% of Kenya’s GDP flows through M-PESA, with 75 million daily transactions.
2. How is Safaricom using AI and machine learning for hyper-personalization?
Safaricom is implementing AI-driven hyper-personalization to optimize revenue and improve customer experience. Its approach starts with data cleansing and creating a single view of each customer across all devices and services. It has built approximately 95 machine learning models and is testing AI-enabled propositions with small customer cohorts. As host Danielle Rios discussed at MWC23, the key is starting small, iterating quickly based on results, and moving away from one-size-fits-all campaigns to truly personalized offers based on individual customer behavior patterns.
3. What is Safaricom’s strategy for testing AI-powered personalized offers?
Safaricom tests AI initiatives using small customer cohorts rather than blasting campaigns to everyone. This allows the company to understand specific customer behaviors, minimize risk from potential negative effects, and iterate quickly based on results. It’s moving toward automating customer prompts based on learned behaviors, so the system can trigger personalized actions without manual intervention. Fawzia Ali emphasizes that this requires changing telco culture from traditional mass-marketing approaches to trusting that AI and machine learning actually work.
4. How is Safaricom preparing its workforce for an AI-driven future?
Safaricom has made AI training mandatory for all employees as part of its 2030 vision. Every employee must complete an interactive online AI course and pass an exam by at least 80%, and each division must implement an AI-enabled initiative to improve customer experience. It uses a “two plus one” approach: two essential company-wide skills (AI and human-centered design) plus one division-specific skill. Currently, 80% of employees have completed the AI course, creating organizational excitement about experimentation and demonstrating the company’s commitment to reskilling its workforce.
5. What solutions does Totogi offer for AI-powered personalization in telco?
Totogi provides AI-powered solutions that help telcos generate hyper-personalized plans, identify new revenue streams, and pull insights from data. As DR explains, Totogi’s approach focuses on experimenting rapidly with small customer groups to test machine learning models, refine strategies, and iterate for outstanding results. The platform helps telcos shift from traditional one-size-fits-all marketing to data-driven personalization. Interested telco executives can connect with DR on LinkedIn or X @TelcoDR to learn more.
6. Why does network differentiation no longer work as a competitive advantage for telcos?
According to Fawzia Ali, most telcos have significantly enhanced their networks, making network quality less of a differentiator. Product offerings are also becoming increasingly homogeneous across carriers. The next competitive battleground is hyper-personalization—understanding customers holistically across all their devices and services, their lifestyle, family situation, and usage patterns. This requires clean data, a single customer view, and AI capabilities to deliver the right offer at the right time through the right channel, treating customers as individuals rather than numbers.