Kenya’s leading Safaricom on Thursday announced impressive growth in its customer base in Ethiopia, reporting a 47.3% increase in monthly active users.   

Safaricom revealed this when it unveiled its financial results for the first six months in Nairobi on Thursday.

This growth has brought the total number of monthly active customers in the Ethiopian market to 6.1 million.  

Safaricom also disclosed that it now covers 46 per cent of Ethiopia’s population.

The market also experienced growth across its product offerings, even though a currency devaluation affected the Group’s overall profitability.

To mitigate against the short-term impact of the ongoing foreign exchange regime reforms, Safaricom says it has taken several steps including renegotiating foreign currency-denominated contracts, onboarding local suppliers for certain products and services and reducing the expatriate’s base.

Voice revenue grew by 27.1 per cent to $4.01 million (Sh516.4 million) driven by increased usage and a growing number of customers, while one-month active voice customers rose by 63.8 per cent to 3.57 million. Voice usage increased with minutes of use growing 52.2 per cent to 97.15.

Messaging revenue on the other hand grew by 98.4 per cent to 36.7 million with one-month active SMS customers now at 1.87 million and SMS per subscriber at 18.52.

Safaricom Ethiopia’s mobile data 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 ended the half-year at $189.1 thousand (Sh24.4 million) with 8.31 million registered customers.

Mobile Data revenue doubled from $10.3 million (Sh1.32 billion) in the first six months to $25 million (Sh3.22 billion) on the back of strong usage levels, customer growth, a strong data offering 4G network, and smartphone penetration initiatives.

Safaricom became the first private operator to enter Ethiopia in early October, about 16 months after winning a telecom license to operate in the country. 

The subsidiary is owned by an international consortium including Vodafone Group; Safaricom PLC; Vodacom Group; Sumitomo Corporation – one of the largest international trading and business investment companies; and British International Investment (BII) – the UK’s development finance institution and impact investor.