This archive report was first published on 1 July 2019.
On July 1, 2019, Safaricom's Chief Executive Officer Bob Collymore, 61, died at his home in Nairobi after a two-year long battle with cancer. The company has since changed the colours of its logo on the official Facebook page to pay tribute to him.
According to a statement by the firm, Collymore had said in May that he would stay in his position for an extra year, despite being set to step down in August after nine years at the helm. During his tenure, Safaricom's share price rose by more than 400 per cent.
Collymore had been undergoing treatment for Acute Myeloid Leukemia since October 2017, and his condition worsened in recent weeks. He succumbed to the cancer at his home in the early hours of Monday, July 1, 2019.
Safaricom, which is 35 per cent owned by South Africa's Vodacom, controls about 62 per cent of Kenya's mobile market, with 30 million subscribers. The company posted a 13 per cent rise in its core earnings for the full year to end-March to Sh89.6 billion, driven by growth in M-Pesa.
