Safaricom has announced that its Ethiopian operation has gained over 740,000 customers so far with 20,000 new customers joining the network daily.
The subsidiary also registered its first revenue in Q2 with Total Revenue hitting Ksh. 98.3 Million with service revenue hitting Ksh. 9.1M.
Safaricom Ethiopia officially switched on its mobile telecommunications network and services in early October. With the telco’s 2G, 3G and 4G mobile services being available in 11 cities across the country including the capital and the country’s second largest city, Dire Dawa.
On the other hand, Safaricom Kenya net income grew by 0.6% YoY to Ksh. 37.55 Billion driven by 4.6% rise in service revenue to KShs 144.83Bn, a 8.7% rise in M-PESA revenue to KShs 56.86Bn while mobile data revenue rose by 11.3% to KShs 26.30Bn.
Peter Ndegwa, Safaricom PLC CEO, had this to say, “We are pleased with the commercial progress made in Ethiopia since launch of operations early last month. Most importantly we are enthusiatic on the growth opportunity in Ethiopia, with over 740,000 customers so far and 20,000 new customers joining the network daily. We are also encouraged by data and voice usage levels with 711 MBs average usage per active data customers and 30 Minutes of Use per active voice customers for the month of October”
Safaricom indicated that they had invested over USD 598million in Ethiopia operations and was encouraged by the early uptake of our services, great customer feedback on the quality of their data experience and the revenue contribution by the Ethiopia unit.
Safaricom also reported that they will soon be launching new products and services in the second half of the
financial year, including the M-PESA Go product to enhance child safety and sound financial knowledge to children below 18 years as well as the anticipated return to charging on banking transactions.