Mr Ndegwa spoke during the announcement of the Full Year 2022/2023 results, which saw net income increase by 3.0% to Ksh 74.5 billion for Safaricom Kenya.
Safaricom Telecommunications Ethiopia was on Thursday, May 11 officially granted the license to operate mobile money services in Ethiopia.
The licence comes seven months after the commercial launch of GSM services in Ethiopia.
Safaricom CEO Peter Ndegwa hailed the move as a great milestone that positions the telco giant to provide essential financial services to the Ethiopian population.
“We are looking forward to launch and roll out the service over the next few months. Since the commercial launch in October, the brand is visible, deeply rooted in Ethiopia, and quickly becoming in every sense fabric of the society," Mr. Ndegwa stated.
In the period under review, Safaricom Telecommunications Ethiopia added close to 3 million customers and built a distributor network of over 114 outlets, delivered quality network in 22 cities and regions; with close to 1300 network sites and over 900 staff, 81% of whom are Ethiopians.
At the same time, over 30 million customers transact, save, or borrow money through their Mpesa mobile phones.
Dilip Pal, Chief Financial Officer, Safaricom PLC at Michael Joseph Centre, Safaricom House, during the 2022/2023 Full Year Results announcement.
M-PESA has catalysed financial inclusion in Kenya to 84% from a low of 26.7% in 2006 according to the 2021 FinAccess Survey and generated over Ksh117.2 billion ($886 million) in revenue in FY23.
Mr Ndegwa spoke during the announcement of the Full Year 2022/2023 results, which saw net income increase by 3.0% to Ksh 74.5 billion for Safaricom Kenya.
Safaricom increased its Group Service Revenue by 5.2% to KES 295.7 billion while the Group net income excluding minority interest declined by 10.6% attributable to expected start-up costs and investment in rolling out operations in Ethiopia within the year.
Voice service revenue declined by 2.6% to KES 81.1 billion; mobile data revenue grew by 11.4% to KES 54.0 billion, while M-PESA revenue grew by 8.8% to KES 117.2 billion.
