Safaricom's Ethiopian venture has upgraded more than 67 network sites across nine towns in the country's Southern Region, part of a continued build-out that underscores how central the Ethiopian market has become to Safaricom's growth story beyond Kenya's borders.
The upgrades span Wolaita Sodo, Boditi, Shinshicho, Durame, Shone, Halaba, Areka, Humbo and Hadero, addressing what the company described as mounting pressure on network capacity alongside persistent power-supply challenges in the region.
"Increasing customer demand has placed pressure on network capacity," Safaricom Ethiopia said, framing the investment as a response to genuine strain on the network rather than pre-emptive expansion.
Beyond the technical upgrade, the rollout carries a visible local footprint. The project generated an estimated 150 jobs during implementation and included the opening of new customer service shops in the upgraded areas, extending Safaricom's physical presence and giving customers a place to resolve service issues without travelling to larger regional centres.
Safaricom's Ethiopian expansion has been closely watched since the company entered the market, both as a test of whether its Kenyan playbook, anchored by M-Pesa and dense agent networks, can translate to a much larger and historically more closed telecoms market, and as a bellwether for the group's broader regional ambitions.
Ethiopia's population dwarfs Kenya's, and a successful, profitable Ethiopian operation would meaningfully diversify Safaricom's earnings base beyond a home market where M-Pesa's growth, while still healthy, is inevitably maturing.
Network investment of this kind is capital-intensive and slow to show up in headline financial results, but it is the kind of unglamorous groundwork that determines whether Safaricom Ethiopia can eventually match the scale of its Kenyan parent.
