Safaricom Partners with The Star, People Daily for KES 10 Newspapers

Safaricom (NSE: SCOM) has partnered with Radio Africa Group and Mediamax to enable customers to purchase The Star and People Daily e-Papers for KES 10 per issue.

This follows the unveiling of a digital portal that allows customers to use their airtime to purchase and access newspapers on the go.

“Radio Africa Group is excited to have Safaricom as our first local digital distribution partner. We look forward to offering Safaricom’s customers unique value adds with our extraordinary and exclusive breaking news and insights from The Star newspaper’s extensive countrywide network of award-winning journalists and analysts. For our Safaricom launch, we are giving a 50% special offer,” said Patrick Quarcoo, CEO, Radio Africa Group.

“We are proud to be the pioneers in the provision of a free daily newspaper in Kenya. Even though our free distribution is reaching over 3.5 million Kenyans daily, we are excited to be a part of this platform that will significantly increase the reach of our newspaper. Indeed, more Kenyans will get more informed and entertained at the comfort of their mobile phones,” said Ken Ngaruiya, CEO, Mediamax.

“Kenyans like to be in the know, and we are using technology to provide them access to news at their fingertips through the digital newspapers. We are continuously working with partners to enrich the portal with more publications so that we have something for everyone,” said Peter Ndegwa, CEO, Safaricom.

The partnership with Radio Africa Group (The Star) and Mediamax (People Daily) brings the number of media partners to four with all leading publications now available on the portal. The other two include Nation Media Group (Daily Nation, Business Daily, Saturday & Sunday Nation) and The Standard Group (The Standard, Saturday & Sunday Standard, and The Nairobian).

Customers can access the newspapers by visiting www.safaricom.com and selecting the “Discover” option followed by “Newspapers”, with no registration, signup, or installation of any application required. Additionally, customers can also make a purchase by dialing *550#.

Purchased publications will appear under the “My Newspaper” tab for 7 days after purchase, and customers will need to have their data on when accessing the portal as each purchase is linked to their mobile phone number. However, the KES 10 price per newspaper inclusive of data usage, meaning a customer’s data bundle will not be consumed when reading through each paper.

The initiative is part of Safaricom’s goal of enabling more businesses to harness the power of the internet to meet the needs of their customers.