- Ethio Telecom, Ethiopia’s state-owned telco, has wrapped up its 2023/24 fiscal year (July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024), surpassing its targets in all key metrics for the budget year.
- The telco closed the year with an 8.9% increase in its subscriber base, reaching 78.3 million customers, and a 21.7% increase in total revenue, reaching Birr 93.7 billion ($1.62 billion). Ethio Telecom’s foreign exchange generation saw a 20.7% increase, reaching $198.02 million.
- It claimed it saved over 4.5 billion Birr ($77.9 million) during the budget year by expanding and diversifying revenue streams and implementing a company-wide cost optimisation strategy called DO2SAVE.
Further, its Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation & Amortization (EBITDA) reached 42.44 billion Birr ($734.7 million), and net profit reached 21.79 billion Birr ($377 million), showing a 20.9% increase compared to the same period last year.
“We’ve quadrupled our net profit in the last six years, solidifying our position as a leading and trusted service provider,” Ethio Telecom stated.
Ethio Telecom’s mobile money service, telebirr, reached 47.5 million subscribers, capturing 45.7% of the total mobile money users in Ethiopia. During the fiscal year, telebirr handled 1.81 trillion Birr ($31 billion) in transactions, bringing the total to 2.55 trillion Birr ($44 billion) since its launch on May 11, 2021.
Per the company, over the past six years, it has consistently ranked as the top platinum tax-paying state-owned enterprise, paying 29.76 billion Birr ($515 million) in taxes in the 2023/24 fiscal year alone.
In December 2022, the telecoms company launched its 5G services in the city of Jijiga, after initially launching in the capital city of Addis Ababa in 2022.
In the past fiscal year, Ethio Telecom expanded its 5G stations to 189, covering four regional capitals, with plans for more cities. It also completed 4G network expansion at 966 sites and 3G network expansion at 682 sites.
Ethio Telecom, the largest telco in Ethiopia, faces competition from Kenya’s Safaricom. Safaricom entered the Ethiopian market in 2022, launched its mobile money service M-PESA in 2023, and raised funds for expansion.
In June 2024, Safaricom Ethiopia received 13 locally manufactured telecom towers from Woda plc as part of a $1.5 billion investment plan. By the end of its fiscal year in March 2024, Safaricom had doubled its active customer base in Ethiopia to 4.4 million.
