Safaricom's Connect Academy, a specialized training program in partnership with the ICT Authority of Kenya, has seen remarkable success with its first cohort. Out of 48 graduates, an impressive 98% have secured job offers with Safaricom and its partner organizations, highlighting the program's effectiveness in addressing Kenya's digital infrastructure skill gap.

• 98% of the first cohort of 48 students secured jobs at Safaricom and partner organizations.
• The Connect Academy was launched during the 2024 Connected Africa Summit.
• The program is a three-month intensive training focused on practical fiber deployment skills.
• CEO of Safaricom PLC, Dr. Peter Ndegwa, emphasized the initiative as an investment in Kenya’s digital future.
• Cohort 2 is set to begin in January 2026.

Safaricom has launched Daraja 3.0, a cloud-native upgrade to its M-PESA API platform, promising a major leap in transaction processing and developer experience. This significant shift positions M-PESA as a "Fintech 2.0" infrastructure provider, moving beyond a simple payment gateway.

• The new platform boasts a throughput capacity of 12,000 Transactions Per Second (TPS).
• Safaricom revealed it is building its own Large Language Model (LLM) for AI integration to ensure data privacy.
• The M-PESA developer ecosystem consists of 105,000 developers, with 25% of all M-PESA transactions now executed via APIs.
• The upgrade introduces dedicated partner support, frictionless DIY tools, and future opportunities for developers to monetize their solutions.