The latest corporate celebration of Peter Ndegwa’s six years at Safaricom is exactly the kind of shareholder story that sounds impressive inside boardrooms, investment forums and public relations offices, but means very little to ordinary customers who are paying for services that feel worse every passing year.
Safaricom can talk about revenue growth, M-Pesa expansion, Ethiopia, shareholder returns, profits and market confidence, but the ordinary Kenyan using Safaricom today is not experiencing those numbers as better service, stronger reliability or a company that listens when complaints become too loud to ignore.
What Kenyans are experiencing today is a company that looks too big to care, too politically comfortable to fear consequences, too protected by market dominance to listen properly and too obsessed with shareholder language to remember that public trust built the brand long before corporate praise singers discovered the balance sheet.
The Problem Today Is Poor Service Hidden Under Shareholder Celebration ¶
The real issue with Safaricom today is not that shareholders are happy, because every listed company naturally wants shareholders to smile, but that shareholder happiness is being presented as proof of transformation while customers are complaining that service quality has deteriorated badly.
A company can make more money and still become worse for customers, especially when it controls an essential service, faces weak competition, enjoys deep political comfort and knows that millions of people have limited choices because their businesses, families and daily payments are already locked into its ecosystem.
That is why the current shareholder boom narrative must be challenged, because a company that handles communication, mobile money, personal data, business payments and national digital infrastructure cannot be praised like a normal kiosk simply because the owners are making good money.
When customers are paying for data they can barely use, returning failing routers to Safaricom shops, being pushed around by customer care and watching the company behave as if every complaint is isolated imagination, then the beautiful numbers begin looking like customer pain repackaged as corporate success.
Safaricom’s 5G Router Complaints Are A Symptom Of A Bigger Disease ¶
The Safaricom 5G router complaints are important because they show how far the company has drifted from the customer discipline that once made Kenyans believe Safaricom was reliable, responsive and ahead of everyone else.
A customer does not buy a router to become a technician, a Safaricom shop regular, a customer care prisoner or a person walking around with a heavy device that looks like a small transformer in the name of internet.
When customers keep saying the router fails for large parts of the month, consumes money without giving reliable service and forces them into endless trips for repairs or explanations, Safaricom should not hide behind polite replies, technical excuses and public relations stories.
The complaints themselves are enough evidence that something is wrong, because when many people in different places complain about the same product, the responsible thing is to investigate, admit the scale of the problem, recall defective units where necessary and compensate customers who paid for service they did not receive.
Safaricom Has Always Had A Rot Problem But Today The Rot Is Loud ¶
The reason some of us are not shocked by Safaricom’s current arrogance is that this company has a long history of behaving like public scrutiny is an inconvenience, which is why the KPMG audit stories I exposed years ago remain useful background when discussing the company’s culture today.
Back then, the KPMG audit material opened a window into procurement weaknesses, single sourcing concerns, supplier games, insider dealings and the kind of corporate dirt that Safaricom’s friendly media environment did not want Kenyans to examine properly.
The point today is not to relitigate every old scandal, but to remind Kenyans that Safaricom did not suddenly develop a culture problem because customers started complaining about routers and data.
The old rot was hidden inside procurement language, supplier arrangements, tender committees, consulting documents and boardroom polish, while today’s rot is being felt openly through poor service, political proximity, weak accountability and a company that behaves like ordinary customers can complain until they get tired.
In the past, the thieves and cartels at least tried to hide behind paperwork, audits, committees and corporate silence, but today the arrogance appears louder because Safaricom has become so dominant that it can be complained about daily and still continue selling the same frustrations to Kenyans.
The Difference Between Old Safaricom And Today’s Safaricom Is Shame ¶
The old Safaricom scandals operated in a world where people still feared exposure, where procurement games needed paperwork, where insiders needed cover and where corporate public relations worked overtime to protect the image of a company Kenyans were trained to admire.
Today’s Safaricom appears to operate in a different mood, where customer complaints can pile up publicly, failing products can remain in circulation, customer care can keep sending people in circles and the company can still expect applause because shareholders are doing well.
That is the difference between a company that was hiding its dirt and a company that now appears too powerful to care whether Kenyans can see the dirt.
The KPMG era told us Safaricom had internal rot, but the current service crisis tells us the rot was never fully cleaned out because companies that truly reform do not become arrogant enough to ignore customers while praising themselves through investor storytelling.
Safaricom Is Becoming Too Political For A Sensitive Company ¶
The most dangerous development around Safaricom today is not just poor service, because poor service can be fixed by competent management that cares, but the growing perception that the company is too politically entangled to be held accountable properly.
Safaricom is too sensitive a company to look like it is sitting comfortably inside the political ecosystem of the regime of the day, because it handles communication, mobile money, personal data, business transactions, government payments and systems that millions of Kenyans depend on daily.
When Safaricom’s leadership appears too close to political power while customers are complaining about failing services, Kenyans naturally begin asking whether the company still fears the regulator, the public, the customer or only the political relationships protecting its comfort.
Safaricom Chairman Adil Khawaja being seen around President Ruto in elite social spaces like Rhino Charge creates terrible optics at a time when Kenyans are questioning whether the company is still serving them properly or becoming another politically comfortable corporate machine.
A company sitting on national communication and money movement should not look like it is being chaired from the VIP tent of political networking, especially when the people paying for its products are complaining that the service has deteriorated.
Peter Ndegwa Cannot Hide Behind Investor Language ¶
Peter Ndegwa’s defenders can talk about M-Pesa growth, Ethiopia expansion, record profits, market confidence and shareholder returns, but customers are not complaining about financial statements because customers are complaining about the services they actually use every day.
A customer whose router barely works does not care how much revenue Safaricom reported in a financial year, because his problem is that he paid for internet and received stress, movement, downtime and excuses.
A small business owner whose data fails does not care about shareholder confidence, because his problem is that his work depends on a company that has become too dominant to feel urgency when things go wrong.
A Kenyan sent in circles by customer care does not care about Ethiopia strategy, because his problem is that the company taking his money cannot solve a basic complaint without turning him into a messenger between departments.
Peter Ndegwa must answer the customer question directly, because Safaricom cannot keep behaving like strong investor numbers are a substitute for reliable services, honest product accountability and customer care that actually solves problems.
Shareholder Boom Can Become Customer Theft ¶
There is a dangerous point where shareholder value stops looking like business excellence and starts looking like a company perfecting extraction from people who have no realistic alternative.
If Safaricom makes more money while customers say they are getting worse service, then the company should not rush to call that innovation because it may simply mean customers are trapped inside a system that keeps collecting even when it underdelivers.
If M-Pesa revenue grows because the whole country has become dependent on the platform, then Kenyans are allowed to ask whether Safaricom is innovating or quietly taxing daily life through a system that has become too central to avoid.
If data revenue grows while users complain about weak service and unreliable devices, then Kenyans are allowed to ask whether Safaricom’s digital transformation is actually customer frustration being monetised.
That is why shareholder boom without customer dignity is not something Kenyans should celebrate blindly, because the same numbers that excite investors may be telling a darker story about market dominance, weak regulation and customer captivity.
Regulators Must Explain Whether They Regulate Safaricom Or Fear Safaricom ¶
The Communications Authority and consumer protection bodies must explain where they are when Kenyans complain publicly that Safaricom is selling them products and services that do not perform as promised.
A small company selling unreliable products would quickly attract threats, warnings, raids, inspections and official statements, yet Safaricom seems to enjoy a different kind of silence even when customer complaints become loud enough to trend.
That silence is why Kenyans keep asking whether the people who should protect consumers are actually regulating Safaricom or merely watching from a safe distance because the company is too rich, too connected and too politically protected.
If customers are paying for routers that fail for large parts of the month, then regulators should demand data, complaints records, refund policies, product failure reports and a clear explanation of what Safaricom is doing for affected users.
The Public Must Stop Worshipping Safaricom ¶
Safaricom has survived for years on a powerful emotional relationship with Kenyans, but that relationship is being damaged by a company culture that now appears more interested in investor praise, political comfort and public relations management than customer respect.
No company should become so important that Kenyans stop questioning it, and no company should become so profitable that poor service is treated as a small inconvenience customers must simply endure.
Safaricom was built on trust, reliability and the feeling that it worked better than everyone else, which is why the current complaints are dangerous for a brand that once enjoyed genuine public affection.
Once customers stop loving a company and only keep using it because they feel trapped, the company has not retained loyalty but has merely created captivity.
Safaricom Must Choose Between Kenyans And Political Comfort ¶
Safaricom must decide whether it wants to remain a customer centred company or continue drifting into the dangerous space of a politically comfortable, shareholder driven extraction machine.
The company cannot keep celebrating transformation in investor articles while customers complain that the services they pay for are becoming unreliable, frustrating and badly handled.
The company cannot keep hiding behind M-Pesa success while data users, router customers and ordinary subscribers feel abandoned inside a system that takes their money faster than it solves their problems.
The company cannot keep enjoying political proximity while expecting Kenyans not to ask whether that closeness is the reason regulators appear asleep when customers need protection.
The Safaricom of today must be judged by what customers experience, not by what shareholders earn, because a company that controls Kenya’s digital life cannot be allowed to become too political, too arrogant and too comfortable to listen.
If Safaricom wants public respect, it must fix the services, compensate affected customers, address the failing router complaints openly and stop pretending that corporate numbers can silence people who are paying for stress in the name of innovation.