Safaricom has invited bids to seek suppliers of a location tracking and intelligence platform which is quite interesting.
In a bid notice, they express interest to take advantage of a location intelligence system which will help them build customer profiles based on their location, according to Business Daily.
“Consequently, the evolution of the mobile network and devices has enabled Safaricom to gather information from the connected devices. At the core of any reliably connected device is an accurate location intelligence system,” the bid notice said.
According to the latest sector statistics by the Communications Authority, Safaricom has a total of 34.5 million customers as of September 2019, of which 27.6 million use MPESA. This is a huge percentage of the Kenya’s population and they use Safaricom services for a number of things and you could understand why Safaricom would intend to get location data to get unique insights to their behaviour.
Such location data can prove to be useful to companies in so many ways. Many firms in different sectors use them to map consumer behaviour patterns.
Although this platform can prove to be quite useful to Safaricom, it also attracts a whole other problem based on the law.
The Data Protection Act was assented into law on 8th November 2019 and it has guidelines regarding personal data protection. According to the law, sharing personal data for sale could can attract a maximum fine of Kshs 5 million. Interesting enough, the bid notice has been removed from Safaricom’s tender website which could mean they have other ideas about it.
