Category Archives: Twitter

Twitter Week: KQ Strike and Equity Profit Dips

Twitter is a micro-blogging tool that is relly nifty for doing mini-posts, forwards and other remarks that (are on any subject) and are maybe not worthy of a full blog post. Here’s a summary of my week on Twitter:

– @coldtusker @kenentrepreneur the tea board of Kenya wishes to remind you that hawking of green tea leaf is
– Signed up too many usgov twitters to keep with #hilaryafrica. Will edit after her trip
– This is a good time for generator and diesel sale companies. I think there was a tax break for generator sales mentioned in uhuru’s June budget speech. No power last night, or this afternoon: will ignore the power ration schedule as a work of fiction KPLC. As bad as Nairobians complain about #KPLC the water crisis is of more concern
– R/T @shiroh the Stanchart diva trip is such a deal. $1,000 for 5 (shopping) days in South Africa for Ladies (incl, flights, hotels)
– Ethiopian Airlines net profit was $118 million, revenue up 33% with new airbus & Boeing orders pending. R/T @Jellyfish78 Kenya Airways vs. Ethiopian Air on Youtube is an informative but nasty spat http://bit.ly/13N34f and http://bit.ly/CM7Np. Also Ethiopian Air to fly Addis-Mombasa (via Kilimanjaro) http://bit.ly/OHsGq
– Diasporans giving up on Kenya http://bit.ly/K78g7
– Tahidi High tackles the mystery of paraffin in high school food
– On CitizenTV Delamere family shot live video in court and in jail. How? Still it’s a good spot light on the archaic judiciary. Delamere’s say Kenyatta family owns their dairy now while neighbours want to grab their 56 000 acre farm. Tom delamere testimony live – shot two dogs with two shots and denies he shot the man who died. How did ‘top lawyer’ tom ojiambo allow this?
– R/T @milonare Impunity starts with you, remember that when you cut in traffic and feel nothing. We reflect our leaders #fractals #Kenya
– Barclays Kenya raising credit card rates to 3.0% (up from 2.5%) from next month
– r/t @mainat Banks have reduced lending not because of interest rates but poor prospects of recovering loans in an economy that has stalled
– @rookieKE if you bank with consolidated, you can transfer cash from A/C to Mpesa using your phone
– You can get to the top of KICC Nairobi for $2 http://www.mamamikes.com/bl… (Though I believe Times Tower is higher)
– r/t @highwayafrica09 Call for Nominations – SABC-Highway Africa New Media Awards. See http://highwayafrica.com
– R/T @LarryMadowo FYI Equity Bank H1 PBT down 15% on one-off transaction last yr related 2 Safaricom IPO, Q2 profits up 25%
– Blog job: write about blogging, social networking & social media from Asia, MidEast and African countries http://tinyurl.com/ljxmcp
– R/T @kachwanya TEAMs shareholders seem to be the confused – there is no onward connectivity between Europe and Dubai, where TEAMS ends!
– Kenya stockbrokers association (KASIB) launched investor education handbook today http://www.kasib.co.ke/
– So @kachwanya @kainvestor, Nairobi City Council earns 14sh ($0.2) for every flyer tossed out of a car window?
– R/T @alykhansatchu #Kenya new 234 item price basket will track mobile-#cellular and computers charges & #camel meat #inflation
– So many aviation colleges in Nairobi with unemployed graduates, these (striking)@kenyaairways workers should know this
– Spent 15min at Nakumatt queue while some afro-diplomats paid for groceries with us $. Their exchange rate is KES72 =$
– COTU’s Francis Atwoli is going to brag about ending the #KQ strike, and coming through for workers.

NSE Portfolio August 2009

Market picking up steadily since last quarterly review in May 2009

The stable


Diamond Trust ↑
Kenya Airways ↑
KCB ↑
Safaricom ↑
Scangroup ↑
Stanbic (Uganda) ↑

Review:
– Best performer: Safaricom up 34% this quarter
– Worst performer KCB up 5%
– In: none
– Out: none
– Increase none
– Decrease none
– Unexpected gains/losses: KQ record loss, safaricom profit drop

Events & Outlook:
– Performance: The Portfolio is up 12% in the last three months while the NSE Index is up 14%. I’d like to think I’m doing better, but Safaricom has lifted the index to a greater extent than my portfolio (8% weight). Safaricom largest weight on the NSE, is also probably now the country’s largest tax payer, largest retail ISP, seller of mobile phones, mover of retail money etc.
– got dividends from all the banks, which are experiencing a slowdown in growth in 2009. Dividend included Stanbic Uganda but will have to increase shares there to minimize impact of clearing foreign cheques so that it does not eat ¼ of
– Looking forward to dividends from Safaricom (but no SWAG ) from Safaricom and another from Kenya Airways (despite their making a massive fuel hedge loss)
– Privatization The Kenya Government has lined up several companies that may be availed later in 2009, however these may not be listed until the market picks up sufficiently. Will look at Family Bank and KWAL (Kenya Wine Agencies)
– New media: The Nairobi Stock Exchangem – @NSEKenya is now on Twitter, while the CDSC launched a new web site to enable investors to better track their portfolios.

How to Get an M-Pesa Refund

and other Safaricom tales

M-Pesa mistake: I interacted with two products over the weekend from Safaricom: One is of course MPesa from Safaricom (Kenya’s largest mobile company), the money transfer system that has been the talk of the remittance and mobile banking world; but what should be a Kenyan success story, is a Vodafone (UK ) tested, developed, and rolled out here as a Safaricom licensee. There was quite a bit of discussion of that at the mobile for change summit on Saturday in Nairobi, but that’s for another day.

My M-Pesa tale is one that many of the 6 million registered users have probably experienced. You go to a pharmacy/cyber café/supermarket and pay a Safaricom agent your money to load you phone up with funds (up to Kshs. 35,000 or ~$450) and zap it off to pay for anything – grandma’s medicine, farm inputs, auto spare parts, satellite TV, etc. the list of MPesa uses is growing

You then wait for a few seconds and get a confirmation message of the transfer, only to discover that you have sent the money to the wrong recipient! Somewhere in Kenya, there was a lady with an unexpected month-end bonus from an anonymous donor. Common rare courtesy calls for one to refund the money, but #$%* did not answer my calls.

It appeared that I would not be able to persuade her to refund my money and so I wrote it off as money lost. I went back to the same agent, and paid money again and sent it off to my aunt, this time with the correct number.

I was still mad and went on to @Twitter ranting and raving that I had sent the wrong person my money and that #$%* had probably gone on a celebration spree as some idiot had sent her a weekend bonus. But on twitter my prayers were answered – by @69MB (who’s traveling in Tanzania) and @Ngeny who sent tweets back, that I could halt that transfer unless #$%* had already withdrawn the money.

Next, I rushed and called the dreaded (always busy) customer service line at Safaricom (#100) to try and get my money back. After a dozen attempts, I got through and was asked to call another line at Safaricom (#234). This one was even busier, but I eventually got through to a gentleman, and I explained the error I made. He asked several questions – my name, intended recipients number, amount sent, number wrongly sent to, my birth date etc. I had all the answers and was very relieved when he said that my money would be refunded within 72 hours. EDIT (uhusiano add that there is an Mpesa Customer Care dedicated line 0722002200)

Oh and about a ½ hour after I finished with Safaricom #$%* tried to call me, perhaps she had raced to agent to withdraw her booty only to be told that the transfer had been held up. I was courteous enough not to answer her call and yell at her

So I now have my money back (still in my phone) and I’ve learnt, thanks to Twitter, and Safaricom, that it’s possible to get an M-Pesa refund

EDIT:

official advice from Safaricom

If you send money to the wrong number:

  • Call Line 234 immediately and provide them with the number that has erroneously received the cash.
  • Funds sent to a wrong number will be reversed only if still available in the wrong recipients’ account.
  • If successful, you will receive an SMS indicating that a reversal has been done

Micro air-time loan :

The other Safaricom product I tried to use was Okoa Jahazi (rescue a sailor in Swahili? – someone correct me) (Okoa Jahazi literary means save/rescue a ship/boat/dhow in Swahili) which works on the premise that you may be stranded somewhere and need to maker an emergency call but don’t have money or are not in a place where you can buy an airtime voucher to complete the call.

Okoa Jahazi is a 50 shilling ($0.65) airtime voucher, almost a micro-loan, which you can request from Safaricom by typing a simple code. It’s not free and will be deducted the next time you purchase a similar voucher. It also attracts a 10% levy, so you get just 45 shillings.

I requested the voucher, as an experiment and made some calls. I then bought a replacement 50 shilling voucher which paid off the micro-loan from Safaricom. But I had a bit of difficulty after that; I could not call a rival network (Zain, Orange) or browse the internet, using the borrowed airtime – it was strictly for making calls to other Safaricom users. So I had to buy another voucher, to get my credit up and out of my micro-debt. This comes when you don’t read the fine print. Anyway, it’s a useful service, but one that should only be used for emergencies.

Summary:

So we have two products form Safaricom. One I have used several times, and will probably use again, one that I hope I will not have to use again (emergency only). The rules are quite clear, but few read the fine print of the offers made by service companies. It makes sense that the micro-loan is restricted to minimal emergency functions, but it would also be nice of Safaricom to inform their (6 million) MPesa users that it is possible to get refunds from M-pesa. If I was not on @Twitter I’d have lost a lot of money

Kutwa Tuesday: Corporate Mysteries

and other Bank Twits

Twitter is a micro-blogging tool that is really nifty for doing mini-posts, forwards and other remarks that (are on any subject) and are maybe not worthy of a full blog post. Here’s a summary of my week on Twitter where there was some interesting discussions, but so far yet to unravel mysteries at Kenya airways, Safaricom and Athi river mining? and some replies

June 15: nairobbery Reading about a Nairobi scam where people actually throw themselves on the windscreens of slow moving cars and later ask for compensation
Kenya central bank study shows popularity of MPesa; users rate it cheap, fast, reliable & accessible http://tinyurl.com/nozxe3

June 16: Media mystery: what happened to the Bamburi vs. Athi story? there were many reporters there but was story buried? http://tinyurl.com/n2k5o8 replies @nakeel It’s called the power of advertising and who pays your bills..

June 17: Economist says Africa’s next country South Sudan “will fail before it has even been born” http://tinyurl.com/kwlw9w
DT Dobie advertising that a Mercedes E200 kompressor is 1796cc and therefore compliant with new Kenya Government rules for Ministers cars
Anti-corruption initiatives falter around Africa http://www.nytimes.com/
Racial Discrimination at World Bank?http://bit.ly/fNXUy
CNBC TV show President Obama killed a fly during an interview. Take it away FOX
Is the Kenya rugby safari sevens tourney over-priced at 1,500 ($19) per season ticket? http://tinyurl.com/m9yhmb
Two new independent (non stockbroker) directors at Nairobi Stock Exchange – NSE Board http://tinyurl.com/n8qqvx

June18 KPLC is going to increase the birth rate in kenya if they keep failing to supply electricity.

June 19: Kenya and Uganda Catholic churches in a race to hell with simultaneous abuse scandals; media coverage in UG is NSFW http://www.redpepper.ug
Michela Wrong to visit the World Bank http://bit.ly/LpJHy

June 20 Discovering the mysterys of white cap, EABLs no.2 that survives recessions without any advertising
replies @coldtusker I didn’t say it ‘failed’ but IMHO its core consumer base isn’t GenX but my mzee’s generation. What happened to WC lite? White Cap’s demographics are skewed to stable, older, wealthier, ‘old dogs’ market. It has failed among the ‘younger’ drinkers. @Fintradecapital thats really true. Its drinkers r consistent.
I use nivea creams, but all their posters and adverts scream i am soooò not their target customer!
replies @uhusiano is cos they are all jungus? @coldtusker Are you thinking of doing a chaz bono? re: nivea – not their target market… LOL… @devonwhittle I’m also a Nivea customer, but their “skin whitening” products and ads worry me – @karuoro I use Nivea shower gel but prefer Vaseline lotion..find nivea lotions too..sticky (don’t know if that makes sense) @Ethnicsupplies I’ve never liked the smell @Shiko_Msa we the target customers that is. feel welcome. Even though they dont welcome we do.
Stomping through kilelewshwa – many apartment complexes have ‘to let’ signs

june 21 Safaricom selling cheap internet ready phones including nokia 1680 for $38 replies @alykhansatchu I was reading that @ thinking 13m Subs converts to 2m x $1.00 a day internet
@coldtusker also former Kenya Airways director is CEO air uganda. Seems KQ is now finishing school for sub-saharan airline bosses. replies @coldtusker Hugh Fraser (ex-KQ now CEO of Air Uganda) was in the very important Commercial Director post @ coldtusker Neil Canty (former CFO-KQ) went to Gulf Air though he has left them for another gig. Africa again?

R/T @airlineroute KLM to operate MD11s on Nairobi-amsterdam for Kenya Airways from july to september! What will the 777s be doing?

Unexpected dividend cheque from stanbic uganda ~$15 in the mail today #migingo
replies @PinkM How do you cash your Stanbic UG cheques?I haven’t cashed for 2 years now. Thanks.Will try that. I wish it was possible to bank at CFC Stanbic even for CFC a/c holders

Kenya retain rugby revens title, but Is that DJ CK on pitch with team at #safarisevens? He’s kenya’s top gate crasher replies @kenyanpundit hehehe, DJ CK was EVERYWHERE at the WEF in Capetown @kachwanya you just made me remember almost similar incident sometime back during Orange launch..yeah he somehow did that

June 22 Kenya’ anti-aid author envious of @dambisamoyo http://bit.ly/mBdFg
replies @kainvestor Many African anti-aid champions see sinister agendas in the success of @dambisamoyo. She wasn’t the 1st to write against aid >>>
Safaricom shares pick up after managers visit Europe & US fund investment firms http://tinyurl.com/lewfyn #safaricom #investorrelations
Family Bank 25th anniversary
President @mwaikibaki encourages banks to use mobile phones to reach beyond the 22% ‘banked’ kenyans
Have more twitter followers than feedburner subsribers; what does that mean?
people who vandalised the Kenya Railways Kibera railway, may also have got paid to fix it after http://tinyurl.com/c9ykra

June 23 Any well wishers to donate a PC or laptop to Mamamikes who were recently robbed? http://www.mamamikes.com/bl…
59% of small business owners rely on credit cards for working capital! scary http://preview.tinyurl.com/

Delta, Zain and KQ Tweet Around

and other Bank Twits

Twitter is a micro-blogging tool that is really nifty for doing mini-posts, forward and other remarks that (are on any subject) and are maybe not worthy of a full blog post. Here’s a summary of the last few days on Twitter:

May 29

  • @MauriYambo Kenya Co-op Bank directors shareholding Stinks http://bit.ly/EvI2d
  • KTN’s Larry … Madowo @larrymadowo on Twitter
  • After a few drinks I discover I may be related to @kafai and @gishungwa! #TIA

May 30

  • Morning traffic jams in Nairobi Kileleshwa. Spy some Apts being built into the river & fear that one day, river will rise & reclaim its banks.
  • Government of Kenya shot itself in foot with punitive alcohol tax. Spirit brewers going belly up, Uhuru should correct.

May 31

  • Happy birthday young @intelligensia

Jun 1

  • @mwaikibaki will launch Kenya’s fibre optic cable this month.
  • @mwaikibaki says Kenya census starts august 24. Ends with his famous phrase, calls hecklers #pumbavu
  • Cadbury seems to have discontinued my fave choc wafer, while alvaro is on sale – buy 5, get 1 free!

June 2

  • Some Nairobi buildings were designed by Mario bros – with secret floors, VIP lifts, hidden entrances, hostile guards to negotiate.
  • Santander Bank may sponsor Ferrari next year – does that also make Alonso their new driver? http://tinyurl.com/mgukmu
  • Does patient capitalist Jacqueline Novogratz @jnovogratz have the answer to the role of aid in development? http://tinyurl.com/q9llxb
  • The African Union wants to set up an African Central Bank http://bit.ly/QcMav
  • @TerryanneC Delta Airlines maiden flight earlier scheduled for tomorrow from Atlanta to Kenya postponed indefinitely
  • If I had to subscribe to one magazine for life, it would be the Economist

June 3

  • @coldtusker even without airport CEO, artur, 1jet1 – US may want more than one airport checkpoint to filter passengers, so non-stop no go.
  • @mamboleo ranneberger welcomed delta in the news and was to officiate today. Mwakwere has been in US for a week waiting to fly
  • @MIMImagazine new Sade album this year http://bit.ly/Ywv14\
  • What’s wrong with Kenya airport Security? http://tinyurl.com/qmmem2
  • Want to speak like Kenyan kids? – try the Sheng dictionary http://www.sheng.co.ke/kamu…
  • Got an accurate shares statement by e-mail from CDSC Kenya – so my stockbroker is still honest

June 4

  • Should companies care about what’s written about them online? http://bit.ly/oiYFw
  • Former ministers and MP’s mentioned in parliament as masterminds of some collapsed Kenya pyramid
  • Michuki and Ruto top a NTV viewer poll of best performing ministers in Kenya. Ok… #Kenya

June 5

  • @alykhansatchu “In September 2008, all hell broke loose, it fell like the Titanic” – Titus Naikuni Kenya Airways CEO
  • @coldtusker Kenya Airways losing 4 billion after Zain’s 7 billion loss, there’s a lot of blood!

June 6

  • Nairobi city council asking 100 shillings ($1.25) to photocopy each 100 words of new laws that will punish residents #FAIL
  • Follow George Ayittey @ayittey for a harsh dose of Afro-reality
  • JKIA arrival lounge – musician Jua Cali and Uganda leader Kizza Besige arrive unnoticed

June 7

  • Button-Brawn wins turkey GP. Kenyan crowds are ABB – Anyone but Button
  • @karuoro does XYZ fail for taking shots at politicos who are too funny to be imitated or is it the poor voices?

June 8

  • Reading Africa confidential to see which way Gabon goes: Lady Senate president should succeed, but Bongo Jnr. is minister of defence.
  • Weekendgossip: Delta planned Nairobi route before they merged with Northwest – who are KLM partners. KLM have invested for many years in Kenya Airways so does it make sense for Delta to fly to Nairobi?

June 9

  • Why would Wanjiku Mugane quit the EABL Board? http://bit.ly/u6a6V
  • R/T @kainvestor @kachwanya Zain looks to close $12bn deal to sell Africa unit – report: http://tinyurl.com/m4wofy
  • Soldiers are not allowed with guns in the room (and other hotel rules) http://bit.ly/BCAV8
  • Time to do the tax return thing – 3 out of 4 years waiting for a tax refund.

June 10

  • How the Lakers won Game 2: I wish Bill Simmons watched Soccer and F1 because there are more conspiracies than NBA http://tinyurl.com/ma2gax
  • The folks at DNA Kenya have published a Promiscuity Index Report: Ave No. of Steady Mistresses! Ave No. of kids per steady Mistress! Ave No. of 1 night stands since wedding! #DNAKenya http://www.dnakenya.com

spot the difference