Airtel Africa announces a 12% growth in mobile data revenue for its East African region, for the first quarter (Q1) ending June 30th, 2024. The revenue increased to USD$170 million (approx. UGX632.4 billion) during the quarter, up from USD$151 million (approx. UGX561.7 billion) during the same period the previous year.
The telco attributed the growth to its significant expansion into the East African mobile data market. The region comprises six countries including Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia.
At the Airtel Africa group level, data usage per customer surged by 25.1% to 6.2 GB, generating USD$409 million (approx. UGX1.5 trillion). East Africa contributed significantly to this performance, with a 14.6% increase in data customers and a 7.1% rise in data Average Revenue Per User (ARPU), resulting in USD$170 million (approx. UGX632.4 billion) in regional revenue.
Strategic investments in network expansion and enhancement fueled these achievements.
Overall, East Africa mobile services revenue grew by 6.5% to $423 million, driven by a 12.4% increase in voice revenue and a 25.7% increase in data revenue & growth in other revenue streams. Additionally, the mobile money business thrived, with revenue soaring 31.7% to US$167 million (approx. UGX621.2 billion) compared to US$155 million (approx. UGX576.6 billion) in the same period last year. The Airtel Money network processed over USD$120 billion (approx. UGX446.4 trillion) in annualized transaction value and mobile money revenue contributed 19.2% of total Group revenue, up from 14.6% in the previous quarter.
Commenting on the performance, Airtel Africa’s CEO, Sunil Taldar said “A strong capital structure is critical to enabling our ambitions and future-proofing our ambitious growth targets. The growth opportunity across our markets remains compelling and we continue to focus on margin improvement as indicated in our FY’24 results.”
Sunil added “Having visited most of our OpCos since I joined Airtel Africa, I am encouraged by the scale of the opportunity available across our markets in both the GSM and mobile money business.” “A key priority for us is to look for new opportunities to further grow our business, especially in the enterprise, fibre, and data centre businesses across our footprint in Africa.”
