School of Social and Political Science

Description

In July 2019, the CEO of Kenya’s largest company, Safaricom, died. This talk uses the funeral of Robert Collymore as a jumping off point to consider the curious personalisation of the abstraction called a corporation. In his near-decade at the helm, Collymore transformed Safaricom into a behemoth; he also emerged as a charismatic leader with a friendly, responsible public image. “Bob,” as many Kenyans called him, was a familiar, even beloved, figure but also the subject of vituperative resentments. This talk argues that the personalisation of Safaricom in the form of an individual provided a series of valuable affordances for the company but also provoked conflicts and limits. One of the most poignant was mortality, but a reflection on the mass-mediated intimacy surrounding Bob reveals other contradictions, too, including the peculiar forms of racial capitalism, nationalism, and dependency in Kenya.