Safaricom Ethiopia has reported explosive 136% progress in its service income, which surged to KES 6.2 billion for the six months ending September 30, 2025. The outcomes introduced on Thursday present fast buyer adoption within the new market, even because the unit grapples with important pricing pressures and a stunning drop in M-PESA income.
The subsidiary, a key a part of Safaricom’s group technique, additionally efficiently narrowed its web loss by 20.1% to KES 15.5 billion, an indication that the massive-scale funding is starting to stabilize.
The first driver of the income increase was the large uptake of core telecom companies. Cell information income, the unit’s largest earner, grew by 102.2% to KES 4.1 billion. Voice income noticed an much more dramatic enhance of 328.5% to KES 1.4 billion. This progress was fueled by an 83.7% soar in Safaricom Ethiopia’s buyer base, which now stands at 11.1 million customers.
Nonetheless, the rosy top-line figures have been contrasted by a big problem in its fintech division. M-PESA income in Ethiopia fell by 45.6% year-on-year, registering simply KES 8.7 million.
This decline comes regardless of the corporate’s important push for the cell cash service and suggests Safaricom has not but begun to successfully monetize the platform in Ethiopia, seemingly prioritizing buyer acquisition and transaction quantity over fee-based income within the service’s introductory part.
The outcomes have been delivered in opposition to a difficult macroeconomic backdrop. Safaricom Group CEO Peter Ndegwa confirmed the subsidiary continues to face pricing and foreign money reform challenges.
The pricing problem refers to an ongoing problem within the Ethiopian market the place information is reportedly being offered at unsustainable, below-cost ranges. Safaricom Ethiopia’s CEO, Wim Vanhelleputte, has beforehand known as for worth rationalization, warning that aggressive, high-volume reductions threaten the long-term viability and future funding within the nation’s telecom sector.
Moreover, the Ethiopian authorities’s foreign money reforms, whereas stabilizing the financial system and ending its hyperinflationary accounting standing, have additionally led to a big depreciation of the birr. This volatility impacts the worth of earnings when translated again to Kenyan Shillings for the group’s consolidated reviews.
Regardless of these hurdles, Safaricom’s capital expenditure (CAPEX) in Ethiopia was minimize by 66% to KES 9.5 billion, signaling that essentially the most intensive part of community building is slowing as the corporate pivots to optimizing its rising operations.
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