Safaricom Ethiopia has 15 million subscribers now, but only a third of them use M-Pesa

Safaricom Ethiopia has crossed 15 million 90-day active subscribers, five years after receiving its unified telecommunications licence from the Ethiopian government in July 2021, and less than four years after commercial launch in October 2022.

That's a genuinely fast rollout by regional standards. It's worth being precise, though, about what that subscriber number does and doesn't represent.

Subscribers and M-Pesa users are not the same number

The 15 million figure counts telecom subscribers, people using Safaricom Ethiopia's network for calls and data. M-Pesa Ethiopia's customer base, the mobile money product specifically, sits at 5.2 million, having more than doubled over the past financial year.

That's real growth for the wallet product. It's also a clear signal that most of Safaricom Ethiopia's subscriber base isn't yet using M-Pesa, at least not as an active customer. Ethiopia's financial habits, existing banking infrastructure, and competitive dynamics differ meaningfully from Kenya's, and Safaricom has been building M-Pesa's Ethiopian footprint through integrations with EthSwitch and local banks rather than assuming the Kenyan model would transplant directly.

The infrastructure behind the number

Safaricom Ethiopia has deployed more than 3,500 network sites, reaching roughly 60% of the country's population, all 4G-enabled and 5G-ready.

Financially, the picture is improving but not yet resolved. Service revenue rose 130.9% to ETB 15.9 billion in the financial year ending March 2026, with mobile data as the largest single contributor. Safaricom PLC, the Kenyan parent, has said Ethiopia's losses have narrowed significantly, with the Ethiopian unit projected to reach EBITDA breakeven in the financial year ending March 2027.

That breakeven date matters more than the subscriber count as a business milestone. Safaricom's own CEO in Ethiopia, Wim Vanhelleputte, has described the subscriber growth as one of the fastest greenfield telecom rollouts recorded globally. Fast growth and financial sustainability are related but separate questions, and investors watching the Ethiopian bet will be tracking March 2027, not this subscriber milestone, as the real test.

The tecMAMBO take

Ethiopia was one of the last major African telecom markets to open to private competition, and Safaricom's entry was always going to be read as a bellwether for whether that liberalisation actually works. Fifteen million subscribers in under four years answers the demand question convincingly.

It doesn't yet answer the monetisation question. M-Pesa's slower Ethiopian uptake compared to Kenya isn't a failure so much as a reminder that mobile money adoption depends on trust, existing banking access, and merchant density, none of which transplant automatically just because the same company built the product. The next milestone worth watching isn't 20 million subscribers. It's whether M-Pesa Ethiopia's growth curve starts to track the telecom subscriber curve, rather than lagging behind it.