Ethiopia: M-Pesa up 120% with 5.2 million subscribers
May 11th 2026
M-Pesa was launched in Ethiopia in August 2023. The platform is mainly in competition with Telebirr from the public company Ethio Telecom launched in 2021.
Telecom operator Safaricom Ethiopia reached 5.2 million active subscribers to its M-Pesa mobile financial services platform at the end of fiscal year 2026, which closed on March 30. This represents a growth of 119.4% compared to fiscal year 2025.
According to Safaricom Group’s annual financial results published on Thursday, May 7, 2026, M-Pesa recorded 442.2 million transactions during the fiscal year, representing a 168.7% increase. The value of these transactions rose by 38.8% to reach 28.6 billion Kenyan shillings (US$221.4 million). The number of active merchants on the platform doubled to 70,000.
While the operator did not specify the factors behind this growth, it comes amid a continued expansion of its operations in the country. Safaricom Ethiopia now claims mobile coverage of 59.2% of the population and 13.6 million active subscribers over 90 days.
Throughout the year, the company has launched numerous initiatives to strengthen M-Pesa’s position in the Ethiopian market. In March, it signed an agreement with the state-owned postal service, EthioPost, to leverage its national network. The company is also continuing to diversify its financial services and is expanding its partnerships, including with public authorities, to support digital payments as part of the country’s digital transformation.
Safaricom is thus seeking to gain a foothold in the Ethiopian mobile money market, where the incumbent operator Ethio Telecom maintains a significant lead with its Telebirr platform. Launched in May 2021, Telebirr had 58.61 million subscriptions by the end of December 2025.
Back