Bob Collymore
Ran Safaricom, east Africa’s biggest mobile network
BOB COLLYMORE, who has died aged 61, was a British-guyanese telecoms executive whose company, Safaricom, was east Africa’s biggest mobile network operator and a pioneer of cashless payment technology that made life easier for millions of low-paid and unbanked Africans.
Headquartered in Nairobi, Safaricom is part-owned by the Kenyan government and by Vodafone, and has attracted a following of international investors as one of Africa’s most progressive and profitable companies. Collymore was a senior regional executive for Vodafone before being appointed chief executive of Safaricom in 2010.
He drove the growth of its subscriber base from 17 to 30 million customers, offering many of them access for the first time, through their phones, to the kind of financial services long enjoyed by consumers in the developed world.
The company’s key product is M-pesa – “pesa” being the Swahili word for money – which was launched in 2007 as an app to facilitate the collection of microfinance repayments.
It was swiftly found to have wider potential as a tool of daily economic life, allowing mobile phones to act as money-wallets and to make transfers to other phones or accounts which could only previously have been carried out, at high risk, by entrusting bundles of cash to third parties for distant delivery.
Three-quarters of Kenya’s population are now believed to be connected in this way, and M-pesa has been recognised and imitated around the world as a breakthrough in financial inclusion. Other Safaricom products include a microsavings service, M-shwari, and a health payment app, M-tiba, that allows lowincome customers to save towards medical expenses.
Robert William Collymore was born on January 13 1958 in Guyana, where he was brought up by his grandparents until he was 16 and joined his mother in England. He completed his education at Selhurst High School in Croydon, having – much to his regret – had to turn down the offer of a place at Warwick University because he was ineligible for a student grant.
Collymore had first earned money as a 12-yearold
by making and selling shell jewellery. After leaving school he had a variety of jobs, including working as a train announcer, before moving into telecoms as a strategy manager with Cellnet in 1993.
He was later a purchasing director for Dixons and Vodafone, moving to Japan in 2003 to oversee the integration of a Vodafone acquisition there. In 2006 he became Vodafone’s governance director for Africa.
Known for his jocular, upbeat manner and for his support for gender equality at Safaricom – almost half of whose workforce are women – Collymore was a celebrity of the Kenyan business scene, saluted by his industry peers for his high-energy leadership and for the social conscience which underpinned his approach to business.
President Uhuru Kenyatta praised his contribution to “our national well-being” and appointed him a Moran [Warrior] of the Order of the Burning Spear. He was also named Chief Executive of the Year for 2017 by African Investor.
Having been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia in 2017, Collymore took leave of absence for treatment in Britain but returned to work last year. In a television interview he joked that when his doctors told him his chemotherapy would last six to nine months, he responded that “being a Safaricom person I thought we could probably do it in five”. Earlier this year he became chair of Kenya’s National Cancer Institute.
Bob Collymore enjoyed literature, art and helicopter flying. His first two marriages ended in divorce. He is survived by his third wife, Wambui Kamiru, by two children of his second marriage, and by two stepchildren of his third.
Bob Collymore, born January 13 1958, died July 1 2019