Safaricom CEO Peter Ndengwa
Kenya's telco, Safaricom Plc now covers 46 per cent of Ethiopia's population, just two years after entering the market.
This means that the network has reached at least 52 million of the country's 112 million population.
This was revealed to investors when the firm unveiled its financial performance for the first six months in Nairobi on Thursday.
According to Safaricom's Group chairman, Adil Khawaja, the firm is working to meet its license obligation of 55 per cent cover by June 2025.
The Kenyan firm became the first private operator in one of Africa's largest telecoms markets in early October 2022 after placing a bid worth $850 million close to (Sh110 billion) to bag the license.
The
financial report shows that the Ethiopian market reported growth across
product offerings despite suffering a currency devaluation that
impacted the Group's overall profitability.
The Ethiopian Birr depreciated by 106 per cent as of September 30, falling to 118.99 units against the greenback, a significant decrease from 57.69 in June.
The subsidiary's voice revenue grew by 27.1 per cent to Sh516.4 million driven by increased usage and a growing number of customers.
One-month active voice customers rose by 63.8 per cent to 3.57 million driven by increased usage and growth of quality net customer additions. Voice usage increased with minutes of use growing 52.2 per cent to 97.15.
Messaging revenue grew by 98.4 per cent to 36.7 million with one-month active SMS customers at 1.87 million and SMS per subscriber at 18.52.
Mobile Data revenue more than doubled from Sh1.32 billion in the first six months to Sh3.22 billion supported by great usage levels, customer growth, coupled with strong data offering, a reliable 4G network, and increased smartphone penetration initiatives.
Mobile data continues to be a key growth driver in Ethiopia. One-month active customers more than doubled in the period from 1.4 million to 3.5 million. Usage per subscriber remains strong doubling to 6.56GB thus uplifting Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) by 10.8 per cent to Sh199.91.
M-Pesa revenue closed the half-year at Sh24.4 million with 8.31 million registered customers.
Active M-Pesa agents in the country stood at 3,160 while active Lipa na M-Pesa merchants increased to 6,660
According to Safaricom, they continue to add more use cases with volume and value transacted at 86.5 million and Sh10.94 billion respectively.
