Safaricom PLC’s Post

Transcript

We believe that the future of Ethiopia is great. The one big advantage that we have in Ethiopia is that we have the bouquet of of all the products that we had that have been developed and all the other seven countries. So we can pick and choose. We believe Ethiopia is more likely to grow the direction of payments using using mobile financial services because banking penetration is is better than in Kenya. We believe by what we call financial year 27 that business will break even. Ethiopia is one of the biggest markets that we believe will make a huge difference to our business as Safaricom. It is the second largest country in Africa with the 120 million plus people. It is the only country that. Had one single mobile connectivity provider which is if you tell. So when we got a chance to get the license, we laid a consortium of investors including the IFC, BI, Sumitomo and and Vodacom to enter Ethiopia. We have been on a on an investment phase and we are on the tail end of that investment phase. We believe by what we call financial year 27 that business would break even which is fantastic. Uh, businesses take time to break even. That would be 4 to five years to break even. Despite some of the challenges that the country has had, including and evaluation Empresa, of course, our and financial service, digital financial services was always going to be a big driver of our business. When you have 120 million people, a cash based society, there's a lot of urban areas. Justru 20 loh ya anakan. That has been primarily public sector late trying to privatize starting with the telecom sector where they are going into banking, they're opening up currency regime and so on and so forth. So we believe that the future of Ethiopia is great. The the country wants to digitize the country to enable its population to have greater financial inclusion. The same way that we've seen Mpesa benefits the other the other seven countries, we believe that Empresa will benefit all front. Mobile financial services would benefit Ethiopia and of course, as you go into a new country. We have to learn that the country is different from the countries you have been and and it won't evolve in the same way that Kenya has evolved. One of the ways that Kenya started from an investor perspective is what we call cashin cashout at agents persons to persons transfer. We believe Ethiopia is more likely to go the direction of payments using using mobile financial services because banking penetration is is better than in Kenya. The CB which is the the big bankers 2000 branches compared to some of the. The, the, the, the local banks here in Kenya. So, so we believe that the actual path to, to Empresa will be different. The one big advantage that that Ethiopia we have in Ethiopia is that we have the bouquet of, of all the products that we had that have been developed and all the others seven countries. So we can pick and choose depending on the products that Ethiopians want to have and actually just tailor them and launch it from the beginning. We have the latest technology that we can use in Kenya. We have to develop that technology from scratch. And go through all the major challenges including starting with USD, going into superb and so on. Today in in Ethiopia, we have started with a superb, USD is still available. The SMS based way of using Impressa is still available. But we can go straight to the latest, the latest technology. We will also be able to enable business remember that the one of the big benefits that Kenya has had on Mpesa is a very large ecosystem of agents. We have 300,000 agents which provide a huge employment but also arms length reach for people to be able to go and deposit and withdraw money. So we are setting that agency network up, we are setting a merchant network up to enable us to, to to think about the future.