Kenya has a gambling problem. This is what the results of betting transactions via M-Pesa have revealed. According to the half year financial results that were released by Safaricom on Wednesday, Kenyans spent Sh. 83.2 billion to place bets in the six months to September.
This betting spree saw the value of the bets jumped 69 percent from Sh. 49.2 billion a year earlier. The revenue from betting doubled to Sh. 2.95 billion from Sh. 1.48 billion. From these bets, the Kenya Revenue Authority collected an estimated Sh. 6.2 billion from gamblers using M-Pesa as it currently takes 7.5 percent of the value of bets placed besides 20 percent of winnings and corporate taxes on betting firms.
The growth of betting and the addiction to betting has spurred the growth of M-Pesa transactions, and pushed betting to the seond biggest source of income for Safaricom’s M-Pesa. Betting is now the second-largest business line by revenue under M-Pesa’s payments and betting unit after consumer-to-business (C2B).
aAccording to a 2017 survey conducted by Geopoll, over half of youths in sub-Saharan Africa have tried gambling. The highest concentration is in Kenya, where 76 percent of youths have engaged in betting. The survey also found that Kenyan millennials place bets more frequently than their counterparts in other sub-Saharan countries, and wager more as well, with an average monthly gambling spend of $50 – mostly on football.
According to the BBC, figures from the gambling regulator, the Betting Control and Licensing Board (BCLB), show that gross gambling revenue for the 2016/2017 financial year was $198m (£151m) – equivalent to about half of the annual health budget.
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Previous attempts by the government to deter betting appear to have hit a dead end. These have included slapping betting with heavy taxes. Two years ago, SportPesa, which was the country’s leading betting firm closed shop over what it claimed were heavy taxes and punitive operating measures by the government. The firm was accused of carting away billions of money placed by gamblers to foreign nations. The firm made a comeback in 2020 through another company known as Milestone.