The staggered launch will make Safaricom’s services available to 25% of Ethiopia’s 110 million-strong population by the end of the financial year, according to Matthew Harrison-Harvey, Safaricom Ethiopia’s chief external affairs and regulatory officer.
“Of course, we want to achieve more than that, and that’s what we’re focusing on,” Matthew Harrison-Harvey told reporters in Addis Ababa. “We are starting in Dire Dawa because that’s the closest place to being ready, and then we will be opening in other cities including Addis Ababa in the next few months.”
Safaricom’s goal is for its network to cover the entire country.
Foreign investment
In May 2021, a consortium led by Kenya’s Safaricom paid $850m for the first-ever license to operate private telecom services in Ethiopia, the world’s last great underserved market. Plans to sell a second license were shelved amid economic uncertainty
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