MILESTONE | Safaricom M-PESA Customers in Ethiopia Cross 3 Million as Data Usage Surpasses Kenya in Just 6 Months

Safaricom has amassed 3.1 million M-PESA customers a few months after activation of M-PESA services in Ethiopia on August 15, 2023.

According to Safaricom, M-PESA is a mobile money platform that enables several financial activities including:

• The making of deposits, withdrawals, transfers (P2P)
• Airtime and data package purchases
• M-PESA to Bank (C2B) and Bank to M-PESA (B2C) transfers
• Merchant payments (with transacting TILLs) and international money remittances services (inbound transfers only)

Safaricom’s Q3 2023 update on Ethiopia says that for the period ending December 31, 2023, Ethiopia currently boasts over 26,400 M-PESA agents and over 43,100 merchants.

Moreover, the system is now interoperable with 9 commercial banks in the country for M-PESA-to-bank transactions including:

• Commercial Bank of Ethiopia
• Dashen Bank
• Bank of Abyssinia
• Awash International Bank
• Co-operative Bank of Oromia
• Abay Bank
• Hibret Bank
• Berhan Bank
• Bunna Bank

On the other hand, for Bank-to-M-PESA services, M-PESA is interoperable with 7 banks in Ethiopia. These banks include:

• The Commercial Bank of Ethiopia
• Dashen Bank
• Bank of Abyssinia
• Awash International Bank
• Cooperative Bank of Oromia
• Abay Bank, and
• Bunna Bank

It is also now over one year since the Kenyan telco launched commercial operations in Ethiopia in October 2022, and according to CEO, Peter Ndegwa, the company has covered 33% of the population and is on track to meet all license coverage obligations.

“As of 31 Dec 2023, we had launched 2,242 base stations (1,252 own built & 990 collocated) covering 33 cities including large and medium towns. This represents 33% of population coverage. Our focus now is to densify connectivity to continue enhancing the quality of connectivity as we create a contiguous network,” said Ndegwa.

“Mobile data is a key proposition in Ethiopia with usage per chargeable mobile data subscriber now at 4.76GB as at the end of Q3 [2023]. We are encouraged by this momentum in usage levels which has now surpassed Kenya,” said Safaricom CEO Ndegwa.

The telco however has faced challenges including the depreciation of the Ethiopian Birr. The Kenyan mobile firm has also been impacted by a high inflation rate. This rate rose to 28.7% in December 2023, up from 28.3% in November 2023.

Follow us on Twitter for latest posts and updates