Addis Ababa, October 6, 2022 (FBC) – Safaricom Ethiopia has today switched on its mobile telecommunications network and services in Addis Ababa. Safaricom Ethiopia is also holding a ceremony today to mark its national launch.
The Ethiopian government launched Digital Ethiopia 2025 to help the country realise its digital potential and leverage technology to build a more prosperous society. As part of that process, Safaricom Ethiopia was granted a nationwide full-service Unified Telecommunications Service Licence and is the first company in the country to launch a competitive mobile service to Ethio Telecom, which is state-owned.
Safaricom Ethiopia’s 2G, 3G and 4G mobile services are available in 11 cities from today including Dire Dawa, Bahir Dar, Awoday, Gondar, Mojo, Harar, Adama, Bishoftu and Debre Birhan where it has already strated trial services a week ago.
The company plans to launch services in a total of 25 cities by April 2023 to meet the 25% population coverage obligation in its licence. Safaricom Ethiopia is building a wholly-owned mobile network and also has infrastructure sharing and interconnection agreements in place with Ethio Telecom.
Safaricom Ethiopia is owned by an international consortium including Vodafone Group; Safaricom; Vodacom Group; Sumitomo Corporation – one of the largest international trading and business investment companies; and British International Investment (BII) – the UK’s development finance institution and impact investor.
Peter Ndegwa, CEO of Safaricom, said: “We look forward to positively impacting the people of Ethiopia with a sustainable and quality mobile network that will be a vital launch pad for nationwide digital telecommunications services to over 100 million Ethiopians.”