Kenyan operator wins first place in the latest Forbes ranking of the best employers in the world.
Forbes, for the second time, has named the world’s 500 Best Employers, based on its annual Forbes Global 2000 ranking of the world’s 2000 largest publicly traded companies. If this second edition is unsurprisingly dominated by the icons of American capitalism (Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon …), the first African company to appear in the list is the Kenyan operator Safaricom, which is placed in the 67th position, followed by South African Naspers (224th), First Rand (432nd) and Sanlam (457th). An African presence admittedly modest (4 companies out of 500) but still up from the first ranking of 2017, where Remgro, a South African-based investment company, was the only African company on the list.
The recognition of Safaricom by Forbes devotes a little more than the flattering image already enjoyed by the telecom operator since it comes just two months after the magazine Fortune, is ranked 19th on its list “Change the World “, which ranks companies according to their societal impact. Highlighting the decisive role of the company in the mobile banking revolution, the American publication recalled that “the M-pesa service, launched by Safaricom in 2007, now serves more than 30 million customers in 10 countries, mainly in remote areas. away from the banks “. According to Safaricom’s latest annual report, the company had 6,130 employees at the end of March 2018, with an average age of 27 years. Of these, half were women.
