Facebook CEO in Kenya praises mobile banking system

By Andrew Wasike

NAIROBI, Kenya

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg landed in Kenya -- his first trip to Sub-Saharan Africa -- on Thursday where he planned to meet with developers and entrepreneurs.

Just as with his Nigeria visit, Zuckerberg entered without any pomp and little media attention, clad in a t-shirt and jeans.

In a Facebook post on his official page, the social-media billionaire explained that aside from his meetings with entrepreneurs and developers, he also planned to “learn about mobile money -- where Kenya is the world leader".

Kenya is home to numerous mobile transfer systems such as the Safaricom M-Pesa mobile banking service which is used by over 70 percent of Kenyan households. It allows users to send, store and withdraw money on its network.

More importantly, M-Pesa serves more than 50 percent of Kenya’s poorer population which lives in rural areas.

The mobile money service was hailed and singled out by U.S. President Barack Obama during his visit to Kenya last year, saying the country was leading innovation in the East African region by launching a program which had never been seen anywhere else in the world.

Zuckerberg said it was “inspiring to see how engineers in Kenya are using mobile money to build businesses and help their community”.

Data from Facebook show that up to 4.5 million Kenyans spend more than six hours on the social-media site every day.