As the shock from the January violence in Kenya subsides, attention has moved back to the staple diet of corruption allegations (sale of the Grand Regency Hotel), poorly executed transactions (Safaricom IPO refunds and Rift Valley Railways) and collapsing infrastructure (roads, power, the Mombasa port).

However, in life the good comes intertwined with the bad; it all depends on which lens you look through. From the perspective of innovation, improved prioritisation and better execution of change, Kenya is sitting on some exciting opportunities.

Back in March 2007, Safaricom, the dominant Kenyan mobile network carrier, launched their M-Pesa money transfer service. It was a world first (if you ignore protests from the Philippines where a similar service had apparently preceded it by a few years).

The idea was simple and elegant -- using your mobile phone to make money transfers to other mobile-phone users (not necessarily Safaricom subscribers) from a virtual account.

The virtual account is a transaction account that allows you to deposit and withdraw funds through a network of M-Pesa agents besides doing transfers to other mobile phone users. You can also buy airtime using the virtual account.

The transactions are carried out in a secure environment using a secret PIN after registering with an M-Pesa agent.

For a registered user transferring money to another registered user, it currently costs as little as Ksh30 (45 US cents) for a transfer of up to Ksh35,000 ($530). The minimum value of a transaction is as low as Ksh100 ($1.50).

Kenyans know a good deal when they see it. In little over a year, over 2 million users have registered and more than Ksh18 billion ($273 million) has been transferred using the service. This particular innovation has literally taken off at supersonic speed.

Why has this happened? Basically, the service has lowered transaction costs for users in terms of money, time and risk.

An urban dweller who used to send money to his nuclear family, other relatives or anyone else using the post office, bus services or friends travelling home can now remit funds quickly and safely for a small fee. The recipient can then obtain cash using an M-Pesa agent of choice.

Then it gets interesting. Other innovative uses have flourished. The service is being used to make payments for lower value goods and services, thus increasing the velocity of business. You can haggle with a hawker on the street and make an electronic payment for whatever you buy.

Instead of travelling upcountry to pay school fees or cater for unforeseen expenses, parents can now agree with friends or teachers to make payments on their behalf after getting the money transferred electronically to them.

People who were too poor to open a bank account can now have a transaction account at their disposal. Only about 2 million Kenyans have bank accounts out of a population of around 36 million, so the potential to broaden access to financial services is massive.

But how did all this happen? The government sold a sizeable stake of its holding in Safaricom to Vodafone, a global multinational which then drove customer numbers through the roof by managing the company better and making world-class technology available to the ordinary Kenyan. Innovations like M-Pesa are driven by this technology and a keen eye for business opportunity.

Whatever anyone may say, this particular transaction has benefited many Kenyans without large amounts of public funding being required.

All the government had to do was to let go in a prudent manner (barring one or two hiccups like Mobitelea) and pick a partner who could deliver. This is the kind of low cost out-of-the-box thinking that could have a significant positive impact on the country.

Innovation drives more innovation. One of the key challenges M-Pesa has is how to make a cash float for transactions available as close to the customer as possible in remote parts of the country. This would increase transfer volumes and customer numbers even more. Opportunity beckons to the brave and innovative.

For example, cash could be made available via mobile ATMs brought to remote villages on market days or banks could reinvest in the vans they used to provide mobile banking services in remote areas previously.

An extended services channel could be opened. Link this with microfinance lending using the same facilities and perhaps a viable way to provide a full range of financial services to the poorest of the poor is a possibility.

Looking for seed capital to kick this off? The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and others are looking for viable models to drive such financial services to the poor.

The way M-Pesa is facilitating commercial payments at the moment is still informal. If I pay my landlord or my child's school fees using the service, how do I prove that I actually paid without having to go back to Safaricom? Perhaps we need a device that can print receipts from the confirmatory SMS.

Safaricom will probably be introducing bill payment services for utilities soon, so another option would be for them to set up bill payment services on a smaller scale for schools or landlords who subscribe to such a service.

What about an interface to a bank so that one can now have a formal bank account with the possibility of seamless movement of funds between the virtual M-Pesa account and a real bank account?

What if Safaricom sets up a bank or bought a bank to make this possible? No public funds needed for any of this. The genie of innovation has unleashed all these possibilities.

However, there is always a catch. Any innovation that is dynamic enough to impact a significant proportion of the population needs some rules around it to prevent crooks and vultures moving in for the kill.

The government is the key to embedding large-scale innovation and making it sustainable. At the moment, there is no law governing e-commerce or electronic payments in Kenya.

Bills and draft regulations have been floating around the system for years but they have not crystallised. This is where prioritisation and execution can really turn things round.

There is comparatively little money required to strengthen the legal and regulatory capacity in government so that the laws required to allow innovation to flourish and take root can be developed and passed quickly.

M-Pesa has only triggered off one set of innovations. The fibre-optic cables that will make network broadband services available cheaply will trigger off another set of innovations and services yet undreamed of.

Inability to set up an enabling legal framework in a timely manner is our Achilles heel. If someone with the force and drive to make this happen quickly could be spurred into action, the benefits for the country could be immense.

What if we could execute a series of transactions similar to the one that led to M-Pesa for our major highways (public-private partnerships), broadband telecommunication services, the port and the railway?

Some years ago, I was heavily involved in consulting on business process re-engineering. There is a core idea in re-engineering that few organisations ever have the mettle to internalise.

Let's say you have 100 potential processes you can improve in an organisation. Each of these has potential benefits it can deliver but you will never have the resources, either human or financial, to change all of them.

What you do is carefully select four or five of them that give you maximum competitive advantage and benefits and use all your resources to transform these. This ensures the changes are done and done well.

We need the drive to prioritise, focus and execute in just a few areas. Innovation will do the rest.

Kamau Kuria is a management consultant and researcher based in Nairobi.