Safaricom’s profit has fallen for the third year in a row by 22.2% to Ksh52.48bn for the year ending March 2023, due to large investments into its Ethiopian subsidiary as well as tax hikes, cuts to the mobile termination rate (to encourage interoperability) and foreign exchange challenges on home turf.
Profit for the year ended March 2022 stood at Ksh67.496bn.
According to Safaricom’s annual report, investment into the radio access network (RAN – used for wireless telecommunications systems) in Ethiopia accounted for 58.1% (Ksh32.4bn) of total capex investments into Safaricom Telecommunication Ethiopia (STE) – almost triple the amount spent on similar infrastructure in Kenya.
Network expansion and transmission had a combined expense of 28.2% (Ksh15.7bn). The rest went into financing operations and IT.
But the total investment made in Ethiopia was within budget , given the telecoms
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