Timing in the brutally competitive telecommunications sector in Kenya and globally is rarely accidental as market shares can rise and fall sharply on the back of a well timed marketing campaign or a disruptive new offering. Therefore, the announcement earlier today of Airtel Kenya’s new “Refer and Earn” campaign for their My Airtel App is a case of a strategically timed competitive attack that tells its own story. 

You see, today is fifteen days or so since Safaricom launched their much maligned My OneApp (OneApp) which has become quite possibly the most severe social media crisis in their largely unblemished and hugely succesful 25-year history. Indeed, it’s only 6 days since Safaricom issued a formal public apology to its customers on social media which is a truly rare moment due to the glaring failures of OneApp that have compromised many of their customers in Kenya and the Diaspora. 

On the back of what is happening at the minute on all things OneApp, Airtel Kenya has arrived — not with noise, not with a tweet, not with a meme — but with a timely marketing campaign that is designed around compelling incentives to convert Kenyan consumers to Airtel’s mobile network. This is not really a marketing campaign to be honest but rather it’s the kind of competitive attack that Safaricom would normally be dishing out, rather than receiving. 

What Airtel Kenya’s Refer & Earn Campaign Actually Is — & Why It Matters

On the surface, the Refer and Earn programme is straightforward. My Airtel App users generate a unique referral link or code, share it with friends and family, and earn when those friends sign up and transact. The referred person downloads the My Airtel App, signs up for the first time using that code, funds their Airtel Money wallet, and buys airtime or data through Airtel Money. 

The new user then receives 1GB of free data immediately upon sign-up. The referrer earns KES 20 every month — credited directly to their Airtel Money wallet — for each referred customer who spends KES 100 or more on airtime or data bundles through Airtel Money in that month. This earning continues for up to five months per referred customer, with no cap on the number of people anyone can refer.

The mechanics are worth going into more detail because they are more sophisticated than a simple download incentive. Most referral programmes pay once — at sign-up or at first transaction. Airtel Kenya is paying repeatedly, every month, for five months, as long as the referred customer remains active. 

This design does two things simultaneously. It incentivizes the referrer not just to acquire a customer but to retain one — to follow up, to encourage continued usage, to become genuinely invested in their referred customer’s ongoing relationship with Airtel Money. It also creates a sustained revenue relationship with the referred customer over a five-month window rather than a one-time conversion event that may or may not stick. This is almost exactly how network marketing works for various products and services. 

The KES 100 monthly spend is at a level that is accessible to the majority of Kenyan consumers at essentially every income level while still being meaningful enough to constitute genuine active engagement rather than a dormant account. Ultimately, the campaign is NOT just trying to acquire customers. It’s trying to acquire and retain active customers, through the social networks of existing active customers, using a financial incentive that compounds over time rather than depleting in a single transaction.

The maximum earning potential — KES 100 per referred customer over five months, with unlimited referrals — transforms the most enthusiastic adopters into a distributed sales force. A moderately well-connected Kenyan who refers ten people, all of whom remain active, earns KES 1,000 spread over five months. 

To be very honest, for most people, that is NOT life-changing money. But it’s paid into their Airtel Money wallet, which means it circulates immediately back into the Airtel Kenya ecosystem — buying bundles, making transfers, contributing to the transaction volume that sustains the network’s commercial viability. To sum it up, value flows from Airtel Kenya to the referrer, from the referrer’s social capital to new customers, and from those new customers’ transactions back into the platform that generated the original incentive.

Airtel Kenya Is Clearly Going After Safaricom’s Disenchanted OneApp Users At Exactly The Right Moment

What makes the Refer and Earn announcement particularly interesting is not only what it offers but what it communicates about the competitive moment Airtel Kenya currently operating in. The My Airtel App offers a simple, focused interface that does not overwhelm users with discovery feeds and mini-app marketplaces before they have completed a basic transaction. 

My Airtel App users can also enjoy app-exclusive offers such as 2GB valid for three days and it works with any SIM slot and is accessible on Wi-Fi and Data even without active bundles, ensuring continued connectivity It also allows users to order, activate and top up home broadband (HBB) devices, and manage multiple HBB accounts and mobile numbers on a single platform. In addition, built-in data management features help customers control usage and avoid out-of-bundle charges. As far as I can tell, these are all features that Safaricom’s OneApp does not (yet?) have at the moment. 

Airtel Kenya is NOT creating the moment. The moment already exists, in the lived experience of millions(?) of frustrated OneApp users. Airtel Kenya is simply timing a campaign launch to ensure that when those users are most receptive to hearing about an alternative, the alternative comes with a financial incentive to try it, a social mechanism to spread it, and a five-month structure to keep them in it.

Airtel Kenya’s Refer & Earn Sits On Top Of A Mobile Money Ecosystem That Makes It Genuinely Compelling

The Refer and Earn campaign does not exist in isolation. It sits on top of an Airtel Money ecosystem that has been building quietly and consistently, and that is now, in the context of Safaricom’s OneApp crisis, finding a much larger audience for its value proposition than it would have reached under normal market conditions. 

Airtel Money’s “Rudishiwa” cashback programme offers 50 per cent guaranteed cashback on transaction fees for bill payments, bank-to-wallet transfers, and agent withdrawals across a network of over 260,000 Airtel Money agents on Kenya. 

For a customer making regular M-PESA-equivalent transactions through Airtel Money, the cashback alone represents a meaningful and recurring reduction in the cost of mobile money — something that M-PESA, with its 40 million customers and near-50-per-cent contribution to Safaricom’s revenue, has no real incentive to match.

The reality is that when you combine Rudishiwa with Refer and Earn, the value proposition becomes considerably more interesting than either in isolation. A referred customer who signs up, earns 1GB free data, activates Airtel Money, and begins transacting is not just receiving a one-time incentive. 

They are entering an ecosystem where their transaction fees are partially returned to them every month, where the person who referred them has a financial interest in their continued activity, and where the app that manages all of this is — by every comparison being made publicly in Kenya right now — simpler, more accessible, and less punitive to use than the dominant alternative.