Safaricom Inks Deal With Kenya Forest Service To Plant 5 Million Trees

Safaricom has signed an MOU with the Kenya Forest Service to plant five million trees within the next five years in a bid to achieve the 10 percent forest cover by 2022.

This was announced during this years Safaricom sustainability report, where Safaricom said that it was also moving away from diesel-powered generators in their masts, to minimise carbon emissions.

“As a first step towards reducing this footprint, we have began to work on moving more of our network sites away from diesel-powered generators and onto the national grid. We are also exploring clean energy solutions to power these sites. For us to arrest climate change, we must take drastic action today. This is why Safaricom has made a bold commitment to become a net-zero carbon-emitting company by 2050,” said Safaricom Chief Corporate Affairs Officer Steve Chege.

Read: MeForest Initiative Seeks To Plant A Million Trees In Every County

The company said that the trees will be planted evenly distributed among gazetted forests in the country, in partnership with the local community to see that success is achieved.

“For us to arrest climate change, we must take drastic action today. This is why Safaricom has made a bold commitment to become a net-zero carbon-emitting company by 2050. Over the last five years, we have been measuring and tracking our carbon footprint, which at present stands at 65,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide,” he added.

Currently, it is estimated that a large tree can absorb approximately 24 kilogrammes of carbon dioxide each year, equivalent to about one tonne of carbon in a lifespan of 40 years.

Read: Kenyan Company Using Slingshots to Plant Trees and Fight Deforestation

The telco revealed that it had grown by 11 percent to Ksh601 billion, 9.6 times the financial profit Safaricom earned during the previous financial year. Safaricom also emerged as the biggest corporate taxpayer in the country, contributing Ksh98 billion yearly to the exchequer.

“This was equivalent to a contribution of 6.3 percent to Kenya’s Gross Domestic Product, and was supported by the over 979,000 jobs we sustained, both directly and indirectly,” added Chege.

The telco also announced that it had disbursed at least Ksh29 billion to 10 million subscribers through Fuliza, and overdraft service launched in January this year. This amounted to 12 Fuliza overdraft processed per second. Also, Mpesa now has 22.6 million customers, an increase of 10 percent and over 167,000 M-PESA agents in the country.

Read: Four Kenya Forestry Service Officers Interdicted Over Illegal Logging In Mbooni Forest

Lipa Na Mpesa platform saw an increase of Merchants by 41 percent. Safaricom’s fibre foot print now stands at 6700 kilometres across the country.

In terms of workforce and management, Safaricom revealed that 34 percent of their senior management staffers are women.

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