Safaricom Telecommunications Ethiopia has ambitious plans to triple its telecom tower network over the coming three years, set to invest more than USD 1.5 billion to extend its coverage across the country despite the obstacles posed by security concerns.
The company currently operates a network of 2,500 towers, 1,000 of which it leases from the state-owned Ethio telecom, according to Wim Vanhelleputte, CEO of Safaricom Ethiopia.
The private telecom operator has coverage in Addis Ababa and 26 other urban areas as well as on roads. But this is far from the target, according to Vanhelleputte, who was appointed CEO last July.
“The country is very big; we aren’t even half way, and we need up to 7000 towers to really cover the entire population” he told The Reporter.
Safaricom Ethiopia’s expansion goals, many of which are part of the terms it agreed to when it won the bid for the country’s first private telecom operator’s license in 2021, have been aided by duty exemptions on the import of equipment. But the CEO notes that Ethiopia’s security issues pose a major hurdle.
“We would love the whole country to be open, but now there are parts of the country where we cannot provide data services because of unresolved security troubles,” said Vanhelleputte. “I really hope in the next two or three years that the entire country opens up.”
The CEO of Safaricom Ethiopia observes the security concerns will make it difficult to achieve the targets set out in the country’s 10-year digitization plan, while limited access to smartphones and limitations in regulation and policymaking also pose challenges.
The effectiveness of Safaricom’s network coverage expansion efforts hinges on public access to smartphones, which Vanhelleputte and his team worry is too low. Safaricom Ethiopia estimates 25 million, or one in five Ethiopians owns a smartphone. It is a figure that the CEO wants to see rise by three or four folds.
The figure also contrasts with data from Ethio telecom, which estimates there are less than 15 million smartphones active in the country.
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