ADDIS ABABA, Jan 30 – Ethio Telecom, Africa’s first telecommunications operator, said its pushback against Safaricom Ethiopia’s mobile money claims was anchored in concerns over national digital security and system integrity, with the dispute laying bare the operational and regulatory strains facing Ethiopia’s young telecom liberalization experiment.
The state-owned operator said it acted to protect more than 87 million customers and safeguard core digital infrastructure, after repeated conduct it said violated established telecom norms and international best practices.
The remarks followed claims by Safaricom Ethiopia’s M-PESA unit that users on Ethio Telecom’s network were unable to access the newly launched “Lehulm” mobile money application. The accusations, made publicly, triggered regulatory attention and intensified scrutiny of how competition is unfolding in the sector.
The state-owned operator said the issue was first raised privately, with verbal warnings delivered to Safaricom before the matter resurfaced publicly. After the claims were repeated, the company’s management reviewed the situation and issued a formal letter signed by chief executive Firehiwot Tamiru.
The letter demanded a public apology, arguing that attributing blame to Ethio Telecom without technical evidence risked damaging public trust and exposing the country’s digital ecosystem to unnecessary risk.
At a Thursday briefing in Addis Ababa on the company’s first-half performance, Tamiru said Ethio Telecom acted to protect its customers and digital systems, not to pick a fight with Safaricom.
“We can’t tolerate as we already warned them,” she told reporters. “We have to safeguard our country as a state-owned company.
Tamiru rejected claims that Ethio Telecom had blocked Safaricom’s network, saying the issue stemmed from what she described as the improper use of its subscribers without the required technical arrangements.
“We did not block the network,” she said. “What occurred was an abuse of our customers, which contradicts international practice. There is no precedent where one operator can freely use the customers of a competitor.”
The operator reported 85.02 billion birr in total revenue for the first half of the fiscal year, achieving 81.1 percent of its performance target, while securing 88.19 million US dollars in foreign currency earnings, equivalent to 83 percent of its plan. The company also posted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of 42.36 billion birr and contributed 35.6 billion birr in taxes to the government.
Its mobile money platform, Telebirr, added 4.69 million new users during the first half of the current Ethiopian fiscal year, bringing the total subscriber base to 58.61 million, reaching 99.4 percent of its target.
Electronic money transactions through Telebirr reached 1.94 trillion birr in the same period, lifting the cumulative value of digital transactions conducted through the platform to 6.88 trillion birr.
For over a century, the state incumbent dominated the country’s fixed-line, mobile and internet services. In 2019, the government began liberalising the sector, awarding Safaricom PLC the first private licence in 2021, with commercial services launching in October 2022.
The entrant aimed to introduce competition in voice, data and digital finance. Yet a World Bank assessment recently flagged persistent anti-competitive practices, noting the national operator’s control over infrastructure and pricing, including below-cost cross-subsidisation through Telebirr, gives it a structural edge that can stifle rivals.
“Indeed, we are the cheapest telecom operator, but that reflects our scale and growth alongside our customers under Digital Ethiopia,” she said. “We do not accept the conclusions of the report and declined to attend its launch event.”
