Safaricom Newsroom

The most dominant story of the past 12 months has been about the pain of the pandemic. Economically, close to two million people lost their jobs in the first three months of the pandemic alone. In April, an interesting statistic arose from analyses of the spending and saving patterns of Kenyans with bank accounts: they had managed to stash away more than KES463 billion. Savings normally become available once you have taken care of your fixed expenses. The question usually is: after you have taken care of your bills, what do you do with the rest of your hard-earned cash? While it’s nice to go out and treat yourself, do you try to save or invest some of that money? Setting aside some money can seem impossible if you can barely make ends meet or are out of a job. For Felista Wangari, the founder of the Facebook group 52 Weeks Savings Challenge, saving was part of her culture and the reason she founded the group, which won an award from Facebook in 2018. “Having grown up in family where savings was a culture, the