Safaricom Ethiopia posted total annual revenue of 15.9 billion Ethiopian birr ($102 million) for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2026, a 130.9% increase from the previous year, the company announced Monday.
The result marks the strongest financial performance since the operator entered Ethiopia in 2022, breaking a decades-long monopoly held by Ethio Telecom.
Mobile data drove the bulk of earnings, generating 9.6 billion birr ($61.4 million), while voice services contributed an additional 3 billion birr ($19.2 million).
Subscriber growth reinforced the revenue gains, with the company recording 13.6 million active subscribers over a 90-day period by year-end, a 54.2% increase from a year earlier, while 30-day active users reached 10.7 million.
M-Pesa, the company’s mobile money platform, emerged as a primary growth engine. The service added users at a 119.4% annual rate, reaching 5.2 million registered customers who processed about 32.5 billion birr ($207.8 million) in transactions during the year.
Dilip Pal, group chief finance and innovation officer, said the results reflected the company’s ability to navigate a complex operating environment.
“We have operated commercially in Ethiopia for three and a half years,” Pal said during a performance briefing in Nairobi.
“We are pleased with the results for FY26. Ethiopia demonstrated a stronger performance in the second half relative to the first half across all key financial metrics,” he said.
Safaricom has invested $2.6 billion in Ethiopian infrastructure to date, extending 4G coverage to 59.2% of the population under its “Coast to Coast” expansion strategy.
At the group level, Safaricom reported service revenue of 414.1 billion Kenyan shillings ($3.21 billion).
Normalized net income rose 67.3% to 99.7 billion shillings ($772 million). Ethiopia now accounts for 15% of group revenue.
The weakening birr continues to compress translated revenue values, and Safaricom is working to localize supply chain and infrastructure costs currently tied to foreign-denominated contracts.
