Peter Ndegwa, CEO, Safaricom
Safaricom’s growth has been supported by its expansion into Ethiopia, where its customer base grew by 47.3% to reach 6.1 million monthly active users. The data usage per user in Ethiopia stands at 6.6GB, significantly higher than Kenya’s 4.1GB. Adil Khawaja, Safaricom’s Board Chairman, expressed satisfaction with the results, highlighting the company’s vision of becoming Africa’s leading purpose-led technology company.
Key financial highlights include M-Pesa revenue of Sh77.2 billion, reflecting a year-over-year increase of 16.6%, contributing to 42.9% of the total revenue. The mobile connectivity segment, including voice, data, and SMS, accounted for 52.2% of the total revenue at Sh93.9 billion.
The telco’s plans to enhance financial services on the M-Pesa platform have faced challenges, such as regulatory pressure from the Central Bank of Kenya to restructure its mobile money unit. Despite this, Safaricom has continued to grow, with a total customer base reaching 52 million after a 7.8% increase year-over-year, and active M-Pesa customers climbing to 40.9 million.
Overall, Safaricom’s strategic expansion into insurance and other financial services is poised to harness its robust customer base while addressing the need for increased financial inclusion in Kenya, where insurance penetration remains at just 3%.