On 20th July, 2011, a famine was officially declared in Kenya.Unlike previous years when famine led to pleas for donor aid, Kenyans decided to act, and they did it on their phones..Safaricom is the leading telco in Kenya, and within 7 days of the declaration, Safaricom had set up a campaign. The name of the campaign was Kenyans for Kenya, and the idea behind it was brilliantly simple.Every day, millions of Kenyans send and receive money using their mobile phones.Safaricom decided to use this mobile wallet – M-PESA – to get Kenyans to feed themselves.A Kenyans for Kenya Account was set up, and Kenyans were asked to donate funds to the account.

The funds would be used to feed starving Kenyans, and all donations would be made via mobile phone by simply sending the money to 111111. And Kenya responded.

Bloggers donated their websites. Corporates donated their time.Celebrities performed the largest benefit concert that Kenya has ever seen.Stars and CEOs served as waiters to help raise funds. Kenyans sacrificed their leisure, tweeted, facebooked, and changed their profile pictures to support this worthy cause.

Close to 650,000 Kenyans donated over 167 Million Shillings in a 4 week period. The campaign raised a total of Kes 677M.Other brands got involved, including competing telcos supermarkets, and banks. The campaign generated a whopping 216 million Shillings worth of free publicity!How do we measure the success of this campaign? Is it by the money raised, or the lives changed, or the fact that is was made by Kenyans for Kenya?

No. The biggest success in the campaign is that it used a basic, simple, ubiquitous device – the mobile phone – to change life forever.

Kenyans for Kenya is proof that given the right technology and effective execution, the digital arena can use an ordinary space to achieve extraordinary results.