Welcome to our strategy update and interim results highlights for the period ended 30 September 2024. As we celebrate Vodacom's 30th birthday, I'm particularly proud of the impact we have made on inclusion in Africa. Vodacom connects 206 million customers and provides financial services to 83 million customers, each representing significant milestones in our history. These milestones were achieved in a financial period characterized by significant currency headwinds on the one hand and a resilient operational response on the other, to ensure that we continue to deliver on our medium-term financial targets. While Vodacom has adapted to evolving regulatory pressures and customer needs, our purpose was unchanged for the past three decades, which is to make sure that everyone is connected. To achieve this purpose, we are focused on empowering people and protecting the planet, while maintaining trust in everything we do.
At the International Telecommunications Union's recent event at the UN General Assembly, we emphasized the urgency of empowering people through digital and financial inclusion. In low-income countries, only 35% of the population have access to 4G. We have adopted a holistic approach to address inclusion across our footprint that leverages Vodacom's scale and partnerships. From new rural sites to fiber to space, we are expanding our coverage to close the digital divide. The commitment is evident in the 1,133 new 4G sites added across the group over the last six months. As pioneers of mobile financial services, we also contribute significantly to Africa's financial inclusion. Our products are designed to support both consumers and merchants. Over the last 12 months, we added another 9 million financial service customers.
In the DRC, our Je Suis Cap and M-Pesa initiative empowers women living with disabilities, reintegrating them into society and lifting them out of poverty by helping them establish their own businesses. Beyond our initiatives in connectivity and financial services, we empower people by supporting communities and SMEs. Whether it's through our various foundations or our Tech for Good platforms, we play a critical role in supporting agriculture, education, energy, health, and water initiatives across our markets. We continue to scale our technology-based free emergency transport system known as m-mama, in partnership with governments, USAID, and the Vodafone Foundation. This lifesaving maternal transport system is now rolled out nationwide in Tanzania and Lesotho, and is on track to launch in Kenya and Malawi.
One of our other key medium-term initiatives is to digitally upskill one million young people across Africa through our Tech Start program, building on the success of our Code Like a Girl program, which has trained over 23,000 young girls in Africa. We recognize the urgent need for digital future-ready skills in Africa. In response, we are creating multiple academic programs in collaboration with other leading tech companies such as AWS. For the planet, we have committed to net zero for Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 2035. In addition to this commitment, we partner with governments and other stakeholders to provide solutions to meet Africa's environmental challenges, including the impact of climate on agriculture, the need for renewable energy, and the scarcity of water. Vodacom Business, Mezzanine, and IoT.nxt are pioneering solutions to improve the access and quality of water while also reducing leakages and unauthorized usage.
By leveraging our existing Tech for Good platforms, we are well placed to support governments with water management, including South Africa's RT29 National Treasury Smart Metering Project. On the 1st of June 1994, we signed up our first customer in South Africa. Fast forward to 2024, and our passion to connect is unwavering. As part of our Vision 2025 ambition, we launched the System of Advantage. This multi-product strategy is aimed at diversifying and differentiating our offerings to our customers and strengthening our relationships with them. We now serve 206 million customers across the footprint that includes the DRC, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique, South Africa, and Tanzania, and covers 570 million people. This geographical reach diversifies the group and unlocks exciting long-term growth opportunities. As Africa's population thrives, we will relentlessly drive inclusion and focus on reaching the 300 million customer milestone.
With connectivity at the core of our offerings, we want to connect our customers via land or space. Our infrastructure scale supports this ambition. With almost 47,000 sites across the continent, we are one of Africa's largest tower owners. Our connectivity reach is a key enabler of digital inclusion. Another critical element to inclusion is affordable access in our services and smartphones. While smartphone penetration is at 62%, I am passionate about connecting the other 18 million of our customers to a digital world. Our groundbreaking prepaid device financing bundles can help bridge this gap and will be a key focus as we move beyond our 2025 strategy. This model allows a customer to repay the phone daily as they generate income. For us, prepaid enhanced financing provides scope to reshape our prepaid proposition into a form of annuity or contract-like revenue.
In addition to the progress in connectivity and geographic reach, we have also driven product diversification as part of Vision 2025. At the heart of this evolution is our financial service business, which already has 83 million customers. We plan to grow this number towards 120 million by 2030. As I reflect on our strategic progress under Vision 2025, I'm very pleased with the shape of our group from a geographic and product perspective. But in my case, the word "pleased" will never mean I'm satisfied. As we look forward to Vision 2030, it is critical that we position Vodacom's strategy to deliver double-digit growth. Combining our innovative mindset with healthy markets will power this opportunity. A healthy market is characterized by its pricing dynamics and ability to generate strong returns. I look forward to unpacking this concept and our 2030 vision at an Investor Day early next year.
We have made significant progress in diversifying our product revenue mix. Prepaid voice makes up 18.9% of service revenue and declined 3.4% in the period. We expect prepaid voice to remain an important contributor to the group, and we will manage its contribution over the medium term. In fact, there are pockets of growth across the portfolio, including DRC, Egypt, and Tanzania. To deliver on our high single-digit growth target, our other product segments are well positioned for growth. Prepaid data makes up 28.2% of service revenue and grew 21.8% in the period. We remain excited about this segment's growth prospects. We continue to complement the structural growth in data traffic demand with network coverage, increased smartphone penetration, and improved data monetization. Our contract revenue is largely from South Africa and contributes 26.3%.
While all our customers demand a best-in-class experience, this is a non-negotiable focus area for our contract customers. Our value proposition in contract is further enhanced with loyalty and content offerings. Shifting to our fastest-growing product segment, our Beyond Mobile new service. In the fiber space, we are working on co-investment models to accelerate rollouts across our international markets. In South Africa, we were disappointed that the Maziv transaction was prohibited by the Competition Tribunal, especially given that it had received support from ICASA, our competitors, and the South African government. As we assess our options in South Africa, we remain of the view that fiber co-build is better than overbuild. In financial services, which is the pillar of Beyond Mobile, we are growing across our markets with products that cut across consumers and merchants. Vodacom's success in this segment is a function of strategic focus.
In the next slide, I will talk through our roadmap for financial services, which we believe will see this revenue compound at a healthy rate. Pulling together our mobility and new service offerings, we partner with businesses to accelerate their growth and with governments to drive efficiencies. We are transforming the ways of working through digital technology in high-growth areas like cloud, hosting, managed security, managed services, and IoT. A key focus area for us in the business segment is SMEs, which are prevalent across our markets. This slide sets out our growth roadmap for financial services and how we leverage our dual-sided ecosystem to deliver exceptional and personalized experiences to consumers and merchants. Vodacom Financial Services and M-Pesa, and Vodacash make a meaningful contribution to financial inclusion across our footprint.
Once financially included, we provide customers with an ecosystem that deepens their access to financial services with products like international remittances, global payments, bill payments, savings, lending, and insurance. Tanzania is a prime example of how we have deepened inclusion. Today, only 43% of our M-Pesa revenue is from peer-to-peer and cash-out. Whereas three years ago, this number was 83%. Further evidence of Tanzania's success is its contribution of M-Pesa to service revenue. This now stands at 38.2% and is just behind Kenya. Looking ahead, the next step in our group's roadmap is unlocking economic growth through financial services. We want to partner with like-minded companies to create a savings culture for consumers through wealth products and an environment for SMEs to thrive. This is where our super apps play a critical role.
They create an open platform where we can integrate our own products with thousands of external service providers. The apps remove the barrier of physical limitations for both consumers and merchants, allowing them to expand well beyond their geographical boundaries. As we execute on this roadmap, we expect to meaningfully scale our financial services customer base and revenue. Across our consolidated markets, we target around 20% compounded annual growth to FY 2027, supporting the group's earnings profile. In this slide, we provide proof points of our dual-sided financial service strategy. Our M-Pesa merchant base increased 22% to 1.2 million merchants. This growth helps expand our addressable commission pool beyond peer-to-peer payments and withdrawals into both online and offline commerce. In South Africa, our merchant acquiring business is also growing quickly with over 11,000 merchants. Our super apps are scaling across the group.
Our M-Pesa app users are up almost a million year on year to 5.3 million. This channel is supporting higher up. In Egypt, Vodafone Cash is the go-to mobile wallet in the country with over half the customer base using the Ana Vodafone app. In South Africa, we successfully merged our telecommunications app, My Vodacom, into VodaPay during the period. VodaPay users buying something on the platform or what we refer to as transacting users reached 1.4 million in the period. A key use case of the One App strategy is the distribution of airtime. In VodaPay, we have doubled our direct airtime sales to 8%. As users come into the app to top up, we leverage the rest of the marketplace to sell one more service. On the right-hand side of the slide, we call out key growth drivers for financial services in FY 25.
Across our M-Pesa markets, it is services that deepen financial inclusion. For our international markets, these have reached 40% of M-Pesa revenue. In Egypt, growth is underpinned by user adoption. We added 2.9 million customers over the last 12 months to reach 9.6 million customers. Given the extent of the unbanked population in Egypt, this growth looks set to continue. South Africa's growth was fueled by insurance, Airtime Advance, our payments, and lending marketplace businesses. Insurance policies were up 10.2% to 2.9 million policies, a key growth driver of the revenue growth. As we diversify into new growth factors beyond peer-to-peer payments, our financial service product suite continues to broaden across global payments, e-commerce, payments, lending, insurance, and savings. As a group, including Safaricom, we have grown our financial service customers by 12.7%. The scope for future growth is material with penetration of our base at just 40%.
The scale of our financial service business is reflected in the transaction value and volumes processed through our mobile money platforms. We processed more than $421 billion in the last 12 months, which equates to $1.2 billion a day. Our financial service revenue from our consolidated entities reached ZAR 6.7 billion in the period, up 7.8% in rand. The underlying growth trend of 17.6%, which adjusts for foreign exchange, confirms how quickly we are scaling the dual-sided ecosystem. With an additional ZAR 10.8 billion generated by Safaricom, this implies a total fintech footprint that is annualizing at ZAR 35 billion. This is a formidable business. Overall, financial services contributed 11.4% to the group service revenue, up from 10% last year. This was supported by the rapid revenue growth in Egypt. At Safaricom, which is an associate, the contribution increased again and reached 43%.
Looking at the contribution to profit before tax, which includes Safaricom, the weighting is around 20%. This bottom-line contribution of financial services means that the Vodacom investment case offers something quite different to a typical emerging market telco. Turning to the group's results, over the last two years, we have absorbed significant hikes in interest rates and major currency shocks in Egypt and Ethiopia. Pleasingly, our Egyptian business is already delivering hard currency bottom-line growth, just six months after 60% devaluation. In Ethiopia, we are navigating through the recent devaluation, having already seen market price increases. With that said, these devaluations had a material impact on our reported results, especially earnings. Our HEPS declined 19.4% to ZAR 3.53. Raisibe will fully unpack the impact of the currency moves in her slides.
While I'm not satisfied with our rand-based outcomes in the period, I'm particularly pleased with our commercial momentum, which is reflected in our normalized growth rates. Revenue grew 10.4% on a normalized basis to ZAR 73.5 billion. Normalized group service revenue grew 9.9% at the high end of our medium-term target range. This result reflected excellent growth from Egypt of 44.1% in local currency, comfortably above inflation levels in the market, and good growth in our beyond mobile services across the group. Group EBITDA was ZAR 26.6 billion and declined 2.7%. The result was impacted by the translation effect of the Egyptian pound devaluation in March. On a normalized basis, Group EBITDA growth was 8.5%, in line with our target range. Egypt delivered a particularly impressive local currency result with EBITDA growth of 65.1%. South Africa's EBITDA grew 2.3%, supported by cost initiatives, which contained cost growth well below inflation.
Our international business had a disappointing result, with EBITDA down 20%. Excellent growth in Tanzania of 18.6% was offset by one-off cost in the DRC and revenue pressure from repricing in Mozambique. We expect a better performance from the international segment in the second half of the year, with Mozambique stabilizing. We remain committed to spending within our capital intensity framework of 13%-14.5% of revenue over the medium term. In the first half of the year, we spent a little below this intensity target at 12% or ZAR 8.8 billion. This was a function of phasing and a stronger rand. For FY 25, we will end closer to the lower end of our capital intensity range. Then, looking at the dividend, the board declared an interim dividend of ZAR 2.85 per share, which represents an 86% payout of headline earnings.
This is above our dividend floor of a 75% payout, as the board considered the phasing of Ethiopia losses for the full financial year. Raisibe will unpack this more in her presentation. Vodacom's geographic mix balances growth opportunities and cash generation. A look at our customer split shows that we have four similarly sized segments. Of our 206 million customers, 76% are now outside South Africa. From a revenue perspective, South Africa remains the largest component. Revenue in South Africa grew 2.4%, impacted by pressures in the wholesale segment. International revenue of ZAR 15.4 billion was up 1.5% on a reported basis, impacted by a stronger rand. The normalized growth was 6.4%, supported by good growth in data and in M-Pesa. Egypt delivered revenue growth of ZAR 14.3 billion, contributing almost 20% to the group. On a reported basis, growth was down 3.9% due to the pound devaluation in March.
In local currency, revenue growth was up an impressive 52.9%, well ahead of inflation. Safaricom had an excellent period of revenue generation, up 21.9% in rand. This was driven by double-digit growth in Kenya and accelerated commercial momentum in Ethiopia. Turning to operating profit, the devaluation in Ethiopia had a material impact on the results in the period. This is flagged on the slide as ZAR 1.1 billion. Excluding the impact of foreign exchange movements, our group operating profit was up 9.8%. In South Africa, operating profit growth was 2.4%, consistent with the revenue and EBITDA result. A flat operating margin in South Africa is a positive trend change from recent years. This was helped by moderated investment into energy-resilient CapEx, with the heavy battery investment now hopefully behind us. In our international business segment, operating profit for the segment declined by 53%, a disappointing result.
In addition to repricing pressure in Mozambique, we faced one-off cost in the DRC and felt the impact of the Ethiopian devaluation. Our direct 5.7% stake in Ethiopia is housed within the international segment. Egypt delivered a stellar result. Operating profit growth was 11.7% in rands, with normalized growth of 90.8%. This was a really encouraging trend and provides good momentum for rand-based growth as we lap the March devaluation. Finally, to Safaricom, the contribution of our associate stake in Safaricom of ZAR 1.3 billion was impacted by the devaluation in Ethiopia and hyperinflation accounting. Like the Egypt result, when the noise from the foreign exchange is removed, Safaricom's underlying result was excellent. In fact, Safaricom's group's net income growth was 10.3%, excluding foreign exchange and hyperinflation adjustments.
Now, shifting to a product lens and looking at our contribution of our beyond mobile services to each of our geographic segments, we target a beyond mobile service revenue contribution of 25% to 30% of group service revenue over the medium term. These high-growth services include financial and digital services, IoT, and fixed. In South Africa, 17.7% of service revenue is now attributable to beyond mobile, up from 16.6% in the prior period. Egypt's beyond mobile contribution is scaling quickly due to Vodafone Cash, digital, and fixed services. At a 16.9% contribution, these services are collectively growing more than 60% year on year. Across our international business, the contribution of beyond mobile was 30.4%, while Safaricom continues to set the benchmark at 47.4%. We intend to scale each of these beyond mobile revenue streams into successful businesses.
Turning now to our four segments, service revenue was up 1.3% to ZAR 31.1 billion, supported by the consumer contract segment, prepaid mobile data, and beyond mobile services, but impacted by pressure in the wholesale segment. The headwind from wholesale was 2.3 percentage points in the period. So this pulls the underlying growth trend between 3% and 4%, not quite where we wanted, but better than the reported result. Customers were up a healthy 4.2% in the period to 49.2 million. Financial services customers had strong growth of 13.5% to 15.6 million due to growth of insurance policies and VodaPay-based transacting users. Beyond mobile services were up 8.1% and contributed ZAR 5.5 billion. This result was supported by financial services growth of 9.5% and fixed growth of 16.7%.
Mobile contract customer revenue grew by 3.6% to ZAR 12.1 billion, supported by the consumer segment and contract price increases in the Q1 . Prepaid mobile customer revenue increased 2.2% to ZAR 13.4 billion. The result was also supported by price adjustments, but also faced a headwind from a strong competitive period last year, which was associated with high levels of load shedding. Vodacom Business service revenue was up 4.9%, excluding wholesale. Cloud hosting and security supported this growth, with revenue for the segment up 48.9%. Overall, Vodacom Business revenue declined by 4% to ZAR 8.3 billion, reflecting the pressure on wholesale revenue. Despite the subdued revenue performance, South Africa delivered EBITDA growth of 2.3%. This was a function of excellent cost control, with cost growth contained well below inflation. Egypt delivered service revenue of ZAR 13 billion, contributing 22.1% to the group.
Service revenue was up 44.1% in local currency, supported by market share gains in connectivity and stellar growth in Vodafone Cash. Egypt ended the period with 48.3 million customers, up 5.9%. Smartphones on the network were up 10.8%, with strong traction on Egypt's Flex bundle offerings and integrated content offerings. Egypt's beyond mobile service revenue growth was 61.3%, supported by financial services and fixed. Financial services grew 94.4% in local currency and was supported by growth in users and volumes of transactions. Vodafone Cash customers were up 43.1% to 9.6 million customers. The 10 million customer milestone is now within touching distance. Egypt delivered ZAR 6.2 billion of EBITDA and made up 23.4% of the group's result. EBITDA growth was an impressive 58.3%, with margins improving to 43.4%. This growth rate would have been even higher were it not for some trading forex impacts in the period.
In October, we announced a $150 million investment into a 5G license in Egypt and extended our existing licenses to 2039 for $17 million. As in the case in South Africa, 5G will not result in a sudden CapEx spike. Instead, we see 5G as an incremental opportunity to support the insatiable appetite for data in Egypt. Service revenue for international business increased 1.3% on a reported basis to ZAR 14.9 billion, with strong growth in data and in M-Pesa, partially offset by foreign exchange transition headwinds. On a normalized basis, service revenue growth was 6.2%. From a market perspective, we delivered 19.1% local currency growth in Tanzania, 11.2% in Lesotho, and 9% USD service revenue growth in the DRC. Mozambique year-on-year performance remained under pressure in the period, declining 15.1% due to repricing. Encouragingly, the month-on-month trend stabilized in the Q2 due to improved commercial positioning.
Customers were up 4.5% to 56.1 million, supported by double-digit growth in Tanzania. This commercial traction supported voice revenue growth in Tanzania and DRC in the Q2. We added 3.2 million data customers, with data traffic growth of 30.5%. Our prepaid handset financing trials in DRC, Mozambique, and Tanzania progressed well in the quarter, with smartphone users up 15%. At M-Pesa, revenue was up a healthy 10.4% on a normalized basis to ZAR 4 billion. At M-Pesa, customers grew 13.3% to 23.8 million. Our international business EBITDA was ZAR 4.3 billion and declined by 20%. This was a disappointing result given the segment's commercial momentum and reflected foreign exchange pressures, one-off cost in the DRC, and the year-on-year revenue pressure in Mozambique. The one-off cost in DRC included bad debts and ad hoc supply escalations exacerbated by inflationary pressures.
We expect a clear EBITDA improvement for international in the second half of the financial year. Safaricom delivered an excellent performance in Kenya, while commercial momentum in Ethiopia accelerated. Service revenue increased 13.1%, supported by strong growth in Kenya of 12.9%. The Kenyan growth was broad-based. At M-Pesa, it was up an impressive 16.6%. Safaricom, together with M-Pesa Africa, continued to develop products that deepen financial inclusion. Our first wealth product in the market, Mali, is a prime example, with assets under management reaching 3 billion KES. Kenyan mobile data revenue grew 20.2%, supported by customer and traffic growth with strong adoption of our 4G services. Fixed service revenue grew 14.7%, supported by fiber to the home, with homes passed reaching 640,000 in the period. In Kenya, EBITDA grew 13.7% with best-in-class margins of 55.1%. This excellent performance supported an incremental 4% upgrade for Kenya's EBITDA guidance.
EBITDA for Safaricom Group was impacted by the devaluation of the Ethiopian Birr in the Q2 and declined 5.8% in Kenyan shillings. Excluding this devaluation, EBITDA growth was 14%. Ethiopia EBITDA losses actually reduced by 7.7%, excluding the devaluation impact, providing comfort that the business is starting to scale. On that note, Ethiopia reached 6.1 million customers, up 47.1%, with total sites now exceeding 3,000. As a result of the devaluation, Safaricom revised the EBITDA break-even target for Ethiopia to FY2027 from FY2026 and increased the expected EBITDA losses for FY25 by KES 15 billion. The medium-term 15-20 million customer target was reiterated, supported by the strong commercial momentum in the business.
In this video, I will unpack our results for the six-month period ended 30 September 2024. My opening slide sets out our group highlights.
We achieved a 1% revenue growth for the period, driven by strong commercial momentum despite facing significant foreign exchange headwinds. Given that the Egyptian pound devalued by more than 60% in March 2024, achieving revenue growth of 1% was a pleasing result. The impact of foreign exchange movements was an important theme in this reporting period, but more on that as we progress through my slides. Group service revenue and EBITDA, which declined 1.2% and 2.7% respectively, were also impacted by foreign exchange headwinds. Our beyond mobile services continue to grow pleasingly, underpinned by financial services. We are well on track to meet our medium-term target of a 25%-30% contribution from beyond mobile. The group EBITDA margin was 36.1%, down 1 percentage point year on year, owing to a soft performance in our international business.
However, pleasingly, the EBITDA margin in South Africa was stable, while Egypt improved the margin by 1.5 percentage points to 43.4%. Headline earnings per share was impacted by a devaluation in Ethiopia and a one-off cost in DRC, which I will unpack later in my slides. Our balance sheet position remains robust as we limit exposure to foreign currency debt. In this period, we also favorably refinanced nearly 14 billion ZAR of M&A-related debt, which should save us at least 300 million ZAR in finance costs. From a shareholder perspective, we declared an interim dividend of 2.85 ZAR per share. While this was down marginally year on year, we have largely absorbed material macro shocks, including significant currency volatility. Moving to our income statement, we have set out reported as well as normalized growth to help provide better insights into our underlying trends.
Normalized growth presents performance on a comparable basis, adjusting for foreign currency fluctuations on a constant currency basis. On a normalized basis, group service revenue growth was 9.9% and at the top end of our medium-term target range. This result reflected strong growth from Egypt of 44.1% in local currency and good growth in our beyond mobile service across the group. Group reported EBITDA was ZAR 26.6 billion, with normalized growth of 8.5%, also within our target range. Egypt's strong performance was the main contributor and supported by excellent revenue momentum and cost containment. The net profit from associate and joint ventures declined to 39% to ZAR 0.8 billion. The result was impacted by a more than 100% devaluation of Ethiopian Birr in the Q2. On a normalized basis, and excluding this devaluation impact, associates declined by 2.9%.
Net finance charges increased 15.5% to ZAR 3.4 billion, largely as a result of losses on the remeasurement of financial instruments related to foreign exchange rate movements. Net profit attributable to equity holders of ZAR 6.8 billion was down 18.4%. The decline, which I will unpack later, was attributable to Ethiopian devaluation, higher finance costs, and one-off cost related to DRC. The group delivered excellent commercial momentum in the interim period and in the Q2. Normalized service revenue growth was 9.7% in the quarter, at a similar level to recent quarters and at the top end of our guidance. South Africa's service revenue grew 1.3% to ZAR 31.1 billion in the first half. Pressure in the wholesale segment was a key drag on our growth. This headwind amounted to 2.3 percentage points, so the rest of the business is running at closer to 3% or 4% growth.
In the Q2, service revenue eased to 0.7%, reflecting a strong prepaid comparative. On a normalized basis, our international business accelerated service revenue to 6.6% in the Q2. The result was driven by an excellent performance in Tanzania and strong growth in DRC. Egypt delivered local currency growth of 44.3% in the Q2, comfortably above inflation levels in their market. Growth was supported by strong customer engagement in connectivity and excellent growth in Vodafone Cash. Shifting focus to cash, our operating free cash flow decreased 18.3%. This was the result of lower EBITDA and working capital absorption. The working capital swing was exaggerated by the currency situation in Egypt. In March, devaluation of the pound materially improved access to foreign exchange, facilitating a repayment of foreign payables.
Working capital is expected to improve meaningfully into the second half, consistent with prior years, supporting a significant improvement in free cash flow. CapEx remains a key capital allocation priority, and we invested almost ZAR 9 billion in the period to support network resilience and maintain our competitive edge across the markets in which we operate. From operating free cash flow, we paid cash of ZAR 4.7 billion and incurred slightly higher net finance costs. We were net payer of dividends to non-controlling shareholders in our subsidiaries after dividends received from associates. More simply, the dividend paid to Egypt's minorities was largely offset by receipt from Safaricom. This slide provides a bridge from EBITDA to the net profit decline of 21.1%. Our depreciation and amortization charge and Safaricom Kenya were tailwinds for profitability.
Pleasingly, the rate of depreciation and amortization in South Africa substantially moderated in the period as we limited our investment into energy resilience and the new spectrum. Unfortunately, these tailwinds were more than offset by the devaluation loss from Ethiopia, which amounted to ZAR 1.1 billion. This resulted in our operating profit declining 5.2% to ZAR 16.1 billion. Below the operating profit line, higher finance costs and taxation weighed on net income. Our effective tax rate was unusually high in this period, and I will unpack this in my next slide. The tax expense of ZAR 4.9 billion was up 18.7%. This increase was as a result of DRC, where we made one-off top-up tax accrual, having had our assessed losses depleted. This means going forward, 100% of our DRC income is now considered taxable.
The effective tax rate at 38.4% was well above our statutory rate of 27%, but this was largely a function of timing and one-offs. In the period, withholding taxes on the subsidiary and associate dividends was a key reconciling factor. While we expect some dividend receipts in the second half, these are unlikely to be as material as the first half. We also faced pressure on our tax rate from a non-deductibility of the finance costs associated with the purchase of Egypt and the funding of our operation in Ethiopia. Having refinanced this debt late in the first half, we expect this tax rate headwind to moderate into the second half. Finally, the DRC top-up increased the effective tax rate by 4.3 percentage points and was one-off in its nature.
Given the timing and nature of these reconciling items that I have discussed, we expect a substantial improvement in the effective tax rate into the second half of the financial year. This slide provides the key drivers of our headline earnings per share decline. Firstly, Mozambique's performance remained under pressure in the period and contributed ZAR 0.11 to the result. Mozambique's performance is stabilizing month on month, so we expect this headwind to moderate into the second half. The material headwinds to earnings were related to DRC and Ethiopia's devaluation. DRC one-off includes the tax payment, as I mentioned earlier, and separately, supplier escalations and some bad debts. For Ethiopia, the devaluation of the birr in the Q2 resulted in the remeasurement of foreign denominated assets and liabilities in Safaricom Ethiopia. The business was in a net dollar liability position, and hence the impact was adverse.
After the minorities, the impact on net income was ZAR 1 billion or ZAR 0.53 per share. More importantly, the prevailing ETB exchange rate provides scope for earnings tailwind into the second half of the financial year, given that Ethiopia is currently in a loss-making position. Another positive callout was Egypt, which also faced a currency devaluation in March 2024. This segment posted net income growth of 75.1% in local currency and 10.1% in rands, and it contributed ZAR 0.30 per share despite the devaluation. This highlights the asset's growth trajectory and scope for strong rand returns over the medium term. If we remove the impact of foreign exchange headwinds, our headline earnings per share would have been 11.4%. Looking back over the last couple of years, the macro cycle has had a material impact on our earnings, but fortunately, not a devastating one.
Critically, our geographic and product revenue diversification, our largely localized cost structures, and balance sheet position meant that we have been able to weather this adverse macro cycle with limited impact on cash generation or leverage. On the left-hand side of the slides, we quantify the impact of our higher interest rates and foreign exchange shocks. Post-COVID, with inflation surging, South Africa followed global central banks and increased the prime rate from 7% in the financial year 2021 to 11.7% in the last financial year 2024. This materially impacted our finance costs, as almost 90% of our debt is rand-based to avoid balance sheet exposure to hard currency. Then, more recently, the Egyptian pound and Ethiopian birr faced material devaluations. These events impacted earnings by at least ZAR 0.50 per share, respectively. Cumulatively, higher finance costs and foreign exchange devaluations have impacted our earnings by ZAR 2.41 per share.
While we cannot discount higher-for-longer rates and foreign exchange volatility, our comparative periods now include material shocks. Our leverage position at 1.1 times net debt to EBITDA remains comfortable. The ratio is up slightly on the prior year due to spectrum payments over the last 12 months. Looking at the composition of our borrowings, as already mentioned, we are largely rand-based. This high weighting of rand debt is deliberate and helps limit our exposure to foreign exchange risk. From an interest rate perspective, our financial debt is 86% floating rate. This debt mix provides us with an opportunity to benefit from stabilizing and even falling interest rate expectations when the cycle turns.
For example, our average cost of debt was 10.4% in the period, having been just 7.7% three years ago, and having started to settle the refinance of some of the most expensive debt, we are hopeful that the new interest rate cycle will be beneficial to our business. Vodacom offers one of the highest dividend payouts on the JSE, reflecting our excellent cash generation. In the period, the board declared an interim dividend of ZAR 2.85 per share. This represents an 86% payout of headline earnings, higher than our typical minimum payout of 75%. The payout was adjusted higher to exclude the devaluation loss from Ethiopia, which is weighted on the first half.
The prevailing ETB exchange rate provides scope for lower translated losses from Ethiopia in the second half to help offset the devaluation losses of ZAR 0.53 per share that we incurred in the first half of the year. Given this dynamic for Ethiopia, the payout ratio was adjusted to reflect the potential phasing of losses for the full year of 2025. The board expects the total dividend for the year ended 31st March 2025 to be at the 75% payout of headline earnings. This implies a payout ratio below 75% for the second half of the year. From a position of balance sheet strength, we are well positioned to accelerate our growth. Diversifying our Beyond Mobile Services is a key priority for the group and improving our customer proposition.
On a consolidated basis, with South Africa, Egypt, and international business in scope, we saw our Beyond Mobile Services revenue contribution continue to steadily increase from 19.8% in the first half to 21.1% in the first half of 2025. Looking ahead, our ambition is to increase this to around 25%-30% in the medium term. The largest weighting within Beyond Mobile is our financial services portfolio. We see this scaling to a mid-teen contribution to group service revenue as we deepen financial inclusion across our markets. In this slide, we set out our capital allocation priorities. Our first priority is investment into organic growth, which includes our core connectivity business and new growth areas. This investment is supported by our big data capabilities, which help us generate best return for each rand that we have invested.
Our dividend policy means that we do not need to compromise on our organic investments. With a payout of 75% of headline earnings, we are left with room to fund our capital intensity framework and also delever our balance sheet in due course. In my concluding slide, I set out our medium-term targets. The strong commercial momentum of the current financial year supports an unchanged outlook for group service revenue and EBITDA at high single-digit growth. Our group capital intensity ratio is unchanged at between 13% and 14.5% of revenue. These targets are on average over the next three years based on prevailing economic conditions. These targets are not without challenges. Notably, the macro outlook remains uncertain with both global growth concerns and local factors. For our international segment, we expect an improved performance in the second half and return to EBITDA growth supported by a gradual recovery in Mozambique.
Separately, our associate Safaricom updated its guidance for the financial year 2025, and building on an excellent first half, Safaricom upgraded its guidance for Kenya, and Ethiopia guidance was also reviewed given the currency move. At a group level, Safaricom is still guiding to grow for the full year. On that note, I will conclude and thank you for your attention.
Over three decades, we have built Vodacom Group into a purpose-led business with a footprint reaching 40% of Africa's population. We are a market leader across our markets with a unique opportunity to drive inclusion. Our asset-rich portfolio is another point of differentiation as we own most of our towers and mobile infrastructure. The combination of our connectivity and financial services scale means we are constantly delivering returns above our cost of capital.
Looking ahead, with these attributes in place, we will continue to scale and execute on our System of Advantage to capture growth. We will focus on accelerating the penetration of our existing connectivity services with new spectrum unlocking 4G, 5G, and fixed wireless opportunities across our markets. Across our digital ecosystem, we have growth opportunities ahead of us as we drive smartphone adoption and deepen financial inclusion, helping unlock our customer growth potential. We are scaling our new prepaid device financing model. Transforming our business will include the optimizing of our assets through sharing, and to this end, we aim to unlock benefits through partnerships in both rural coverage and fiber across our footprint. As we pull together the levers of our strategy, we are now positioned to accelerate our growth profile, and this is reflected in our guidance.
Finally, we will always prioritize our contribution to societies in which we operate and our purpose-led ambitions. Our drive to empower people encompasses several elements, including higher female representation at the management level, driving financial inclusion, closing the digital divide, and supporting communities. For Planet, in addition to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, we are leveraging our for good platforms to support our markets in agriculture, energy, and water. We look forward to engaging with you over the coming weeks on our investor roadshow. This concludes my presentation. Thank you for your attention.