“My life changed on December 8, 2025,” begins 30-year-old Faith Muchira. “I was at home in Gatunduri, Embu County, with my baby. I was busy with household chores. I had just warmed some water for my baby as I prepared to start cleaning utensils.”
She purchased internet bundles on her phone and set up a hotspot connection for her television to stream cartoons in order to keep her baby engaged as she worked. A couple of minutes later, she heard her phone ringing.
“The phone was in the bedroom. When I picked it up, I noticed that the caller was from Safaricom. The number was 0722 000 000,” she says.
At first, she thought that Safaricom was calling over an M-PESA transaction that might have been wrongly sent to her number.
“I took the call casually. I thought it was someone who may have inadvertently sent money to my number and Safaricom was calling to confirm before making a reversal,” she says.
“The caller first asked if they were speaking with Faith Muchira. I answered affirmatively and they asked me to read out my ID number to confirm if I was Faith.”
She hung up the phone immediately she was asked about her identity card number and went back to her chores.
“I was startled when they asked for my ID number. I hung up the phone. I was afraid that this was scam. Why were they asking for my ID number?”
A few minutes later, the phone rang again.
“I picked it up. The caller told me to confirm that the number was from Safaricom. They reassured me that it was Safaricom calling and I was not being scammed. I eased my fears off and gave them my ID number.”
Faith says that after confirming she was the person they had reached out to, Safaricom asked her to check a message that had been sent to her mobile number during the call.
“I checked. I couldn’t believe it. I had won Sh1 million in the ongoing Shangwe@25 campaign,” she says, a bright smile forming on her face.
It took some time for reality to sink in. That day, she kept checking and rechecking the message she had received. “For hours, I couldn’t believe it. I would even pinch myself just to make sure that I was not dreaming. I would stand in front of the mirror and just smile,” she says.
Faith says that this call is the turnaround that she has been waiting all her life. You see, she has been running small business ventures from her home.
“I am not formally employed. I run small hustles from my home,” she says. She has been selling the Pure Pishori brand of rice, which she sources from Nice Millers. “I buy rice in small sacks on wholesale and sell from home to my neighbours. I have not opened a shop yet because of capital,” she says.
At the same time, Faith has been working as a mobile nail technician within Gatunduri village. “I move around the village and shopping centre offering manicure painting services.” To top it all, Faith is also a small-scale farmer. “I am also a rabbit farmer. I have been rearing rabbits from my mom’s homestead in Nguviu village.”
Faith says that she intends to use her newfound fortune to expand her business ventures. “I am planning to expand my pishori rice and manicure painting business. I want to open a nails parlour shop in town where there is a bigger flow of customers. I also want to open a shop in town where I can start bringing bigger stocks of rice for sale,” she says, adding that she will build a hutch for her rabbits at her home.
“I am not going to venture into new businesses that I am not familiar with. I am going to scale up what I have been doing to generate more income,” she says.
In addition to the Sh1 million reward, Faith was granted Sh250,000 for a community project that she would like to uplift. “I have chosen to have the money rewarded to our village chama. The chama has been intending to purchase tents and chairs to help villagers whenever we have burials, weddings, ruracio (dowry ceremonies) and other village events,” she says.
Interestingly, Faith is just one of the many lives that Safaricom is changing with that golden phone call. In some cases, Safaricom has gone to the extent of encouraging winners to invest and grow their fortunes with a money market fund.
Take Joseph Ndung’u, aa 27 year-old who hails from Mshomoroni in Kisauni Constituency. Ndung’u is a TukTuk driver. After he won Sh1 million a few days before Christmas in December 2025, Safaricom deposited the money in his Ziidi Money Market Fund (MMF), a low-risk investment product that allows Kenyans to earn interest from their money. The product allows for free and instant deposits and withdrawals between M-PESA and Ziidi.
To reach as many Kenyans as possible, Safaricom has also set up various other reward categories, all of which are impacting small and medium enterprises like Serah Nabwire’s. Serah was rewarded with Sh100,000 in November 2025. She has been running a mahindi choma business since 1999.
“I have been using Safaricom for two years now. I registered my line with Pochi la Biashara in order to support my business operations,” she says. Nabwire recalls that on the day she received the call that she had won Sh100,000, business was not booming.
“I was just sitting here at my workplace. The sun was out. It was an extremely hot day,” she says. The news that she had won the reward came as a relief for her family. She used part of the money to settle a motorcycle debt that her husband had taken. “I settled the debt and now my husband can work as a boda boda rider without fear of getting auctioned,” she says. She also set aside some money for her child’s school fees, and used the remainder to reward herself with a new phone.
SEE MORE: Inside Safaricom’s 25 years of touching lives and small businesses
The Shangwe@25 promotion campaign started on October 31, 2025 and shall conclude on January 19, 2026. “Shangwe@25 promotion campaign is our way of saying thank you to our customers who have stood with us over the last 25 years. It is also our way of ensuring that when one customer wins, their community wins too,” says Safaricom chief executive officer Peter Ndegwa.
