Safaricom, Kenya’s leading telco generated majority of the revenue in the industry in 2019 if you consider CA’s data.
The Communications Authority of Kenya recently released their Q4 Sector Statistics reported which revealed an interesting statistic.
From the report, mobile service revenue in the industry generated 276.6 billion in 2019. This was in crease of 4.6% compared to 2018 when the industry generated 264.4 billion.
Safaricom is a publicly traded company in Kenya and as such, they publish their financial information for their investors. In 2019, they revealed that they revealed that they generated Kshs 240.3 billion in 2019.
That means Safaricom generated a staggering 86.87% of the total telco revenue in 2019 which is insane by any measure.
We can also look at the disparity in another way. Combined, the other players in the industry generated Kshs 36.3 billion in 2019. That is slightly less than what Safaricom earned from mobile data revenue in 2019 (38.69 billion vs 36.3 billion). Also, to understand how big MPESA is to Safaricom , if you add Safaricom’s mobile data revenue in 2019 with the rest of the telco revenue in 2019, it will equal Safaricom’s entire MPESA revenue in 2019.
In general, voice service revenue in the Kenyan telco industry is still king with 38.3% of the total revenue. Data (mobile and fixed) revenue for the industry is 21.9% of the total while SMS revenue is 7.1% of the total. Other mobile services which includes mobile money and roaming account for 32.8% of the total.
The CA also noted that there was a drop in amount of money spent in investments. Kshs 35.6 billion was investment in the industry in 2019 which is 41% lower than what was spent in 2018 (Kshs 60.3 billion)