When he looks at the many sets of data on Ethiopia available, Wim Vanhelleputte gets excited at one number – three million.
Three million is the number of Ethiopians who turn 18 every year, which means a lot for the man in charge of Safaricom Ethiopia, which started commercial operations in October 2022.
“We have to be there for them. We have to be their brand, their aspirational brand, because they need data,” Wim told investors at a meeting in Addis Ababa recently.
The message from Wim and the top leadership of Safaricom was that they have been steadily laying foundation blocks and are now ready to accelerate on the digital superhighway to enable Ethiopians get more mobile telephony access and financial inclusion.
“You need a network, you need people, you need distribution, you need the M-PESA platform. All these building blocks, the foundation of our success, have now been put in place. What we’re looking at now is scaling these for future success. Now we’re going to start building the house and show how successful we can be here,” Wim explained.
Safaricom Ethiopia now boasts of over 4 million customers, and it has attained 33 per cent population coverage. It has put up over 2,200 base stations in 33 cities, which translates to building 125 sites every month in 18 months. In contrast Kenya has 6,300 base stations built over the more than 23 years Safaricom has existed.
A population of 120 million people, which is largely youthful coupled with low mobile penetration and rapid economic growth drives Safaricom’s confidence to invest in Ethiopia.
“We believe in the future of this country. We believe in delivering and being partners to the Ethiopian government in terms of a digital future for Ethiopia and we’ll continue to invest with that mindset so that we can truly transform lives in this country,” said Peter Ndegwa, the CEO of Safaricom.
This is despite the challenges brought by internal and external conflicts, loan default by the Ethiopian government, forex scarcity, high inflation, and periodic drought.
For Wim and his team, one of the first big indicators of success has been the uptake of data: “Mobile data has been a huge success. In September, the Ethiopia team had a very big milestone where they overtook from a usage perspective, the Kenya average mobile data use per customer. Ethiopia’s now is 4.3GB while Kenya’s is 3.7GB.”
Leveraging on the Safaricom lessons picked over its almost 25-year journey, Safaricom Ethiopia seeks to forge a quicker, non-traditional path to success. It aims to enhance financial inclusion by leapfrogging straight into merchant payments, utility payments, government-related payments as well as savings, and lending. The fast data network in Ethiopia also lends itself to customers using the Safaricom app from the get-go.
Michael Joseph, the Chairman of the Safaricom Ethiopia Board summed it up succinctly, “Safaricom Ethiopia’s purpose is to transform lives with a digital future.”
The Investor Day is part of Safaricom group’s efforts to engage with its business partners and stakeholders on its operations, strategies, and impact. This year’s edition in Addis Ababa which brought together 150 attendees comprised of analysts, regulators, Government representatives, Safaricom PLC Kenya and Ethiopia board members and senior management followed a successful one in Nairobi in February 2023.
