Safaricom Ethiopia expects to double the number of customers over the next year, from the current nine million to 17 million, with Safaricom CEO Dr Peter Ndegwa confident that the network now can now scale up.

Dr Ndegwa said the recruitment of customers will now be accelerated as there are now more than 3,000 base transmission stations in that country.

“17 million customers is half of what we have in Kenya, so it tells you the country is very large and the opportunity is very significant,” said Dr Ndegwa.

Over the last three years, the consortium behind Safaricom Ethiopia has poured in about $1.2 billion (KSh155.3 billion) into putting up the infrastructure required to make the network operational.

There are now more than 3,000 base transmission sites in Ethiopia, which is about half those in Kenya, which have taken 25 years to build.

The good thing about building a network at this time in Ethiopia, said Dr  Ndegwa, is that it is all 4G and ready to upgrade to 5G if necessary. The other good thing about building a network is that the population in Ethiopia is concentrated, which means that the masts don’t need to be spread over a wide area to reach customers.

For investors, the good news is that expenditure on infrastructrure will now begin to reduce.

“Once you build the network, you start recruiting customers, to put more customers on to your network,” Dr Ndegwa explained. “We already have scale network. We just now need to accelerate the recruitement of customers.”

As a new network without as many customers as the existing network, Safaricom Ethiopia first worked best as a network with very good mobile data.

“When you have a small network, most people will use data. When you have a large network, then now people can start calling each other because you have enough customers that have your lines,” said Dr Ndgewa.

Watch the video to hear more about the prospects for Ethiopia.