Can YOU outsmart the expert?

22 Nairobi Star H Monday, 26 November 2007

Up to date, accuratebusiness information

NEWS YoU CaN USE, EVErY DaY.

I always encourage people to use their brains but there are sometimes when you don’t have to exercise the grey cells too vigorously.

Now, in my humble opinion, safaricom’s success is not hard to understand.

The underlying calling and sMs business is still in a supernormal growth phase and, yes, certainly, The France Telecom entry via a Telkom stake will sharpen up the competitive pressure. But the way we are growing, I feel there is plenty of space.

Now what I find really exciting about safaricom is the MPEsa money transfer business and by extension, the opportunities to develop the ‘mobile wallet’.

safaricom, with its 8.7 million customers, has more subscribers than the bank accounts we Kenyans have — and by a factor of nearly three! The reach of this particular platform is extraordinary.

There is an old story about the fax machine. One is obviously useless because you cannot send a fax to yourself. Two is better. But as you add more, traffic grows

exponentially, the curve steepens. It’s a very interesting mathematical scenario.

with this number of subscribers, can you even imagine the growth potential? It’s blue sky. In fact, and Michael Joseph rebutted me on this point, I think it’s potentially a very disruptive entrant for the banks.

I cannot believe they are far from making this an international business.

Funnily enough, in the west a few years ago, the talk was all about a ‘mobile wallet’; how you would pay your bills, etc., through the phone. It never happened there, but it is happening here. so imagine, you will pay your electricity bill, your Nakumatt shopping, you will send some cash to your dad in Mombasa, your brother in Kisumu and safaricom will be taking a few shillings each time and when 8.7 million of us start doing this, it’s going to be very interesting, indeed.

you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Aly-Khan Satchu www.rich.co.ke is the author of Anyone Can Be Rich, available in local bookshops.

SafaricomObviously

Kenya airways (66.50)Buy for long term. It’s bottoming out now.

Nation Media Group (301.00)Buy for long term. Nine month results were stellar.

athi river Mining (93.50)Buy for long term. Nine month results were stellar.

iCDCi (26.25) (Sh198.00)It’s correlated to the market and that’s going to surge by early next year.

shares go up and down and readers are advised that this column represents Mr satchu’s personal opinions.

5 to bUY

tby peter kiragu

The first ever retail manage-ment course has been started in Kenya. A partnership signed between Nakumatt Super-markets and Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology is expected to pave the way for the introduction of a retail management course at diploma level.

The course, which is inter-nationally recognised, will take two years and will ad-mit 80 students to begin with. After graduation, they are expected to fit well in the fast-growing retail sector in Kenya and abroad. Currently, people working in the sector have no prior or professional qualifica-tions and are mostly form four graduates.

enrolment into the course is therefore expected to trans-late into more competitive and more bargaining power for the graduates once they get into the job market.

Students wishing to join the programme will be expected to have satisfied the minimum en-try requirements as approved by the university senate.

“The introduction of the course is in line with the ob-jectives of the two institutions to play a proactive role in the

realisation of Vision 2030 of ensuring Kenya becomes a middle income country,” said JKUAT Vice Chancellor, Prof Nick Wanjohi. he said pre-paratory plans to enable the university introduce the Di-ploma in Retail Management programme in the coming year were underway.

In the preparatory stage, Prof Wanjohi said that Naku-matt holdings had committed to provide the technical and financial assistance necessary

for the preparation of the cur-riculum. Nakumatt has also pledged to extend full schol-arships to 10 of the students from needy backgrounds.

Wanjohi said courses in the programme had been selected to give a broad coverage of functional areas of business and management and more specialised practical coverage of retail management.

he said: “The programme had been designed to meet the needs of people who would

wish to work as retail manag-ers or those who are already working in other functional ar-eas but would wish to enhance their skills in retail manage-ment.”

Nakumatt holdings Op-erations Director Thiagarajan Ramamurthy expressed con-cern that despite the growth of the local retail sector in Kenya and east Africa, training needs customised to the sector had not been sufficiently addressed to guarantee tandem growth.

VarSitY UNVEiLSrEtaiL CoUrSE

SPIN Knit Dairy plans to in-vest more than Sh10 million in upgrading its technology infrastructure.

The main aim of the upgrade is to increase the efficiency of data process-ing from remote sites and to boost security on the wide area network against system vulnerabilities.

The company’s information technology manager hulder Mwasela said that risks from outside the local area network were increasing and the IT department needed to put up measures to prepare for any eventuality.

“We have set up virtual private networks for our re-gional branches and installed

firewalls. We have also installed several mail filters to guard against virus attacks and spam mail,” Mwasela said.

he also said that the imple-mentation of an automated milk collection system would involve the calibration of me-tered milk tankers. As a re-sult, milk measurements will

be taken upon milk being poured into the milk tank. It entails checking the weight, butterfat content, acidity and microbial analysis of the milk.

In 2005, the Computer Society of Kenya Annual Awards named the Spin Knit Dairy the best ICT-enabled enterprise.

spin Knit puts aside sh10m for IT upgrade

A TRADe fair seeking to showcase the trade and investment opportunities available in Southern Sudan starts tomorrow in Juba.

The Juba International Trade Fair and Investment exhibition will run until December 3. Investors will have an opportunity to see the development in Southern Sudan’s various sectors.

Kenyans who have been to Juba, the capital of Southern Sudan, say it is the most expensive city in Africa. Yet it lacks basic facilities. For instance, one pays Sh9,900 (150 US$) for a bed in a tent

or a prefab building for a night.

There is, therefore, great opportunity in the hotel and accommodation sectors as well as retail outlets.

There are also viable op-portunities in sectors such as banking, insurance, auditing and finance, transport, tele-communication, security and freight and logistics services.

“There are a lot of invest-ment opportunities around and all kinds of services are re-quired. We are talking about building a new country with enormous resources of every kind,” said Southern Sudan’s

director for commerce, trade and exhibition, Christine Iji-no at a recent press briefing in Nairobi.

The exhibition also aims to help form relationships between business communities and key individuals within Sudanese markets and to share knowledge, and network connections with participants in the event.

however, the greatest aim of the exhibition is to motivate the people of Southern Sudan in their efforts to move away from dependency on relief aid to take up viable economic activities.

southern sudan trade fair to begin

Fair: Director for commerce, Chris-tine ijino, addressing the press.

Photo/CoURtESY

Photo/ChARLES KIMANI

aLY KHaN’SH Star PortFoLio

Star biZ

Why SafariCom iS a SuCCeSS Story

DEaL: Jkuat Vice-Chancellor prof Nick Wanjohi (L) and Nakumatt holdings managing Director atul Shah exchange agreement documents, sealing a partnership between the two