Welcome to our annual results highlights for the financial year ending 31st of March, 2026. Vodacom is a purpose-led company. We are committed to connecting everyone for a better future. Our initiative seeks to empower people, protect the planet, and maintain trust. We believe that inclusion starts with opportunity. Through our Code Like a Girl program, we have trained over 34,000 girls. Our latest skills-based initiative is called TechStart. It's a very ambitious program where we aim to upskill 1 million young people by 2027. To date, over 400,000 students have registered and engaged in the program. We've already certified 103,000 participants who have completed the program. We continue to actively pursue connectivity to bridge the digital divide.
To this end, we have added 3,000 4G sites and 6,200 5G sites in the year, including Safaricom. The consolidated group spend of CapEx is more than ZAR 23 billion this year, while Safaricom spent ZAR 7.5 billion in Kenya and Ethiopia. We want to see people thrive, particularly the most vulnerable in society. Our m-mama emergency healthcare program has already saved over 9,000 lives. In the DRC, we've trained women with disabilities as M-PESA agents. To date, we have trained close to 1,600 women on this program, known as Je suis Cap. In Egypt, we progressed the Maaki program, which will empower 1 million rural women over the next 3 years.
It is designed to foster digital and financial inclusion by equipping rural women with skills and tools to utilize Vodafone Cash services and engage in digital education. In addition to our ethics, privacy, and procurement programs, we are committed to protecting the planet. As part of our climate transition plan, 100% of our usage and grid electricity was matched with renewable energy sources, and we continue on this journey to reduce our carbon footprint. Our Tech for Good solutions plays a vital role in us delivering on our purpose pillars and addressing challenges across key sectors, including energy, water, healthcare, education, and agriculture. For example, in the water segment, Vodacom subsidiary Mezzanine has developed a product called the Digital Water Tower. It's an innovative solution designed to deliver support and maintain critical water services for suppliers, municipalities, and consumers.
In healthcare, we have created a center of excellence given the breadth of work we are doing in the sector that can be expanded into more markets. In Egypt and Kenya, we have partnered with government on the delivery of national health insurance. In an ever-changing environment, we remain committed to doing what's right. We have emerged as an ESG leader and expect to be even more progressive with our initiatives in the years to come. FY 2026 was an excellent year for Vodacom. We have benefited from our geographic and product diversification strategy. This year, we added 26 million customers across the group, more than double our annual Vision 2030 target of 10 million customers. This takes our customer base to 237 million across our eight markets. Similarly, we reached a milestone of 103 million financial service customers.
Our beyond mobile contribution grew to 22.3% of service revenue. With our headline earnings and free cash growing by more than 20% respectively, the benefits of our diversification are apparent. Equally pleasing was that our return on capital employed, or ROCE, grew by 4 percentage points to 27.5%, demonstrating our commitment to creating shareholder value. I'll spend some more time later in the presentation on each of our segments, but in summary, South Africa had a resilient year with encouraging improved prepaid trends in the fourth quarter. Egypt continued to excel with strong commercial momentum and now contributes close to 30% of the group's EBITDA. Our international markets reported good operational leverage and land EBITDA growth. Safaricom also had an excellent year with double-digit growth in Kenya and is scaling in Ethiopia.
Pleasingly, its FY26 dividend is 40% above its previous record high. Overall, I'm happy to share a set of results that balances growth and sustainable returns for our shareholders. The group is in a strong position to withstand macroeconomic volatility. The strong commercial momentum has enabled us to upgrade our Vision 2030 customer aspirations and confirm our medium-term targets. In addition, we are further accelerating Vision 2030 with two milestone transactions. In December, our acquisition of a strategic stake in South African fiber business MAZIV was finalized. The deal will accelerate fiber deployment and expand access to high-quality connectivity, particularly in historically underserviced communities. The stake in MAZIV has allowed us to extend our fiber exposure to 3.6 million homes and businesses in South Africa and Kenya. Also in December, we announced an agreement to acquire an additional 20% stake in Safaricom.
This transformational transaction reinforces our commitment to the high-growth East African markets of Kenya and Ethiopia. The Safaricom transaction will represent a step change in Vodacom's scale, diversification, and growth profile. We're excited by this opportunity. When the transaction completes, we intend to update our Vision 2030 ambitions to reflect the enhanced portfolio. Turning to a snapshot of the group's financial results. We reported an excellent year setting a new high watermark for earnings and free cash flow. Our customers are the foundation of our growth. Pleasingly, we grew our customer base by 12.3% and financial service customers grew 17.4%. Our revenue reached ZAR 168 billion with double digits reported growth of 10.1% as currency stabilized. Group service revenue grew 10.6% to ZAR 134 billion.
Normalized growth was 12.9%, tracking favorably against our double-digit medium-term target. This result reflected strong service revenue growth from Egypt of 36.2% in local currency, comfortably above inflation levels in the market and good growth in our beyond mobile services across the group. We saw a stable performance in South Africa and a strong recovery from our international business. Group EBITDA was ZAR 63 billion and increased 12.8% in ZAR. Egypt's ZAR-based EBITDA growth of 38.5% was a key driver of the group result. Pleasingly, South Africa reverted to EBITDA growth in the second half of the financial year. Our international business EBITDA increased 27.8%, supported by excellent local currency growth in Tanzania of 38.8% and the lapping of once-off costs in the DRC.
Local currency DRC growth was 46.1%. On a normalized basis, EBITDA growth was 14.2%, comfortably above our double-digit target. Net profit attributable to equity holders grew 24.4% to ZAR 20.6 billion. Consistent with the net profit result, our headline earnings per share improved significantly to ZAR 10.53 per share, up 22.9%. Our capital expenditure intensity was within our guided range at 14.1%, having spent ZAR 23.6 billion. This year-over-year increase of ZAR 3.4 billion supported FY 2026 strong growth. Finally, looking at the dividend, the board has declared a final dividend of ZAR 4.05 per share, up 20.9%.
The total dividend for the year being ZAR 7.35 per share is up 18.5%. Overall, we are really pleased with these excellent outcomes. Vision 2030 is designed to deepen our positive impact across Africa and deliver sustainable value for our shareholders. Our group snapshot confirmed that it was a strong start to our five-year strategy. The first strategic imperative of Vision 2030 is to differentiate with customer experience. We aim to earn customer loyalty by delivering meaningful value propositions and a simplified, exceptional experience across every touch point. Our goal at the start of Vision 2030 was to grow our customer base to over 260 million by financial year 2030, with Net Promoter Score leadership in all our markets.
With our customer base reaching 237 million in the year, we upgrade our customer ambition from 260 million to 275 million customers. Our second imperative is to innovate for growth. To deliver on this imperative, we will drive market leadership in connectivity and scale beyond mobile, targeting a contribution of beyond mobile services towards 30% of group service revenue. In the year, we reached a contribution of 22.3% of service revenue tracking to our business plans. We are also committed to deepening digital and financial inclusion with a revised target of 130 million financial service customers by 2030. We are targeting smartphone penetration above 75%.
We've also delivered a strong performance in the year against both these metrics, with financial service customers up to 103 million and smartphone penetration reaching 68.6%. Our third imperative is to invest in strategic enablers for growth and efficiency. This means investing in AI, our people, next generation skills and a diversified future-ready workforce with a target of 50% female executives by FY 2030, excluding Ethiopia. We will continue to modernize our networks, harness AI-powered operations and strengthen cybersecurity to support exceptional customer experience and operational excellence. As we execute on Vision 2030 and the strategic imperatives, we reaffirm our double-digit EBITDA growth ambition. A normalized EBITDA growth rate of 14.2% is a good proof point of our growth potential.
As we deliver on our EBITDA ambition, we set ourselves up for hard currency growth and returns. FY26 proved a standout year as we delivered euro earnings growth of 21.3%, an excellent result. Vodacom's geographic mix balances growth opportunities and strong cash generation. A look at our customer split shows that we have 4 similarly sized segments. Of our 237 million customers, 81% are now outside South Africa. From a revenue perspective, South Africa remains the largest component and grew 2.1%. International revenue of ZAR 35 billion was up 8.4% on a reported basis, supported by excellent growth in data and M-Pesa. Egypt delivered revenue of ZAR 41.4 billion, contributing 24.7% to the Group. On a reported basis, growth was 34.5%.
Safaricom had another excellent year with revenue up 4.3% in ZAR. Turning to operating profit, the group reported ZAR 44.1 billion for the year, up 23.2% on a reported basis. In South Africa, operating profit was flat to ZAR 20.5 billion, reflecting pressure on EBITDA and a once-off cost. This was more than offset by growth across the rest of the portfolio. Egypt contributed ZAR 15.3 billion to group operating profit and was up 48.9% on a reported basis. The international business operating profit was ZAR 4.9 billion, up a very healthy 67.2%. The result was supported by strong EBITDA performance and lower losses from Vodacom's direct stake in Safaricom Ethiopia. On a reported basis, Safaricom contributed ZAR 4.6 billion to groups operating profit, increasing 38.3%.
Safaricom's result was supported by an excellent performance in Kenya and lower losses in Ethiopia. When looking at the segments, it is again encouraging to see that our markets outside South Africa contributed 55% of this year's group operating profit, in line with our diversification strategy. Our growth ambitions are also supported by product adoption. As part of Vision 2030, we intend to grow the contribution of our beyond mobile services towards 30% of service revenue. This segment includes fixed cloud hosting, security, digital and financial services, and IoT. In the fiber space, we are working on co-investment models to accelerate rollouts across our markets. In South Africa, we've executed on the MAZIV transaction, which is now fully underway, given that fiber is a critical enabler of inclusive economic growth.
In financial services, which is the largest component of beyond mobile, we are growing across our markets with products that cut across consumers and merchants. I will go into more detail on financial service business in slides to come. Prepaid data makes up 31.5% of service revenue, just on double the contribution of prepaid voice. We continue to complement the structural growth in data traffic demand with network coverage, increased smartphone penetration, and improved data monetization. This supported excellent growth of 22.8% in the period. Our contract revenue is largely from South Africa and Egypt and contributes 25.6% of service revenue. While all our customers demand the best-in-class experience, this is non-negotiable focus area for our contract customers. We have managed to apply inflationary price adjustments, but with more value for our customers.
Our value proposition in contract is further enhanced with loyalty, insurance, device, and content offerings. Finally, to prepaid voice. Having contributed 31% of our service revenue in FY 2020, prepaid voice now makes up only 15.9% of service revenue. We expect prepaid voice to remain an important contributor to the group, and we will manage its contribution over the medium term. Pulling together our connectivity, digital, and financial service offerings, we partner with businesses to accelerate their growth and with governments to drive efficiency. We are transforming the ways of working through digital technology in high growth areas like cloud, hosting, managed security, managed services, IoT, and digitalizing governments. This is reflected in the double-digit growth we reported for Vodacom Business in the year. Shifting now to a product lens and looking at the contribution of our beyond mobile services to each of our geographic segments.
These high-growth services include financial and digital services, IoT, fixed, cloud, and hosting. In South Africa, 18.7% of service revenue is now attributable to beyond mobile, up from 17.8% in the prior year. This reflects ongoing growth in financial services and good growth in fixed, cloud, and hosting services. Egypt's beyond mobile contribution is supported by Vodafone Cash, digital, and fixed. The contribution of these services continues to increase and reached 18.3% for the year. Across our international business, the contribution of beyond mobile was 33.9%, while Safaricom continues to set the benchmark at 49%. Under Vision 2030, we continue to scale each of these beyond mobile revenue streams into successful businesses. Turning now to more detail on financial services, the key driver of beyond mobile.
Our financial service strategy is focused on driving and deepening financial inclusion for both consumers and merchants. We power the strategy with our super apps, which provide personalized services across e-commerce, entertainment, cross-border remittances, payments, savings, investments, lending, insurance, and wealth management services. Looking ahead, as we execute on Vision 2030 and deepening financial inclusion across our markets, we expect to unlock new economic growth opportunities. In this slide, we set out our proof points for our financial services ecosystem. Our M-PESA merchant base increased 63.1% to 3.9 million. This growth helps expand our addressable commission pools beyond peer-to-peer payments and withdrawals in both online and offline commerce. In South Africa, our merchant acquiring business reaches over 11,200 merchants. In the consumer space, our super apps are scaling across the group.
M-PESA app users are now at 9.4 million, up 14.3%. As our customers migrate to the apps, we are seeing increased product penetration supporting higher ARPU. In Egypt, Vodafone Cash is the go-to mobile wallet in the country with 60% of our customer base on the Vodafone app. A key use case of the one app strategy is the distribution of airtime. In South Africa on VodaPay, our direct airtime sales is actually a double-digit percentage of prepaid airtime sales. 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 our key growth drivers for the financial services in the coming year. Across our M-PESA footprint, we will continue to deepen financial inclusion by advancing financial services such as lending, wealth, and savings.
In Egypt, we will scale our users and use cases facilitated by a new banking partner and a new platform. South Africa's financial service growth this year was fueled by insurance at double-digit, and we expect the same in FY 2027 as we expand our insurance portfolio both in terms of products but also geographies. As we see product success like insurance in the market, we leverage it into the rest of the Group. This is also true for global payments, e-commerce, lending, wealth, and savings, which we are scaling across our footprint. As a Group, including Safaricom, we have grown our financial services customers past the 100 million milestone, which is a wonderful achievement for us. The scope for future growth is material with penetration of our base only at 43%.
The scale of our financial service business is reflected in the transaction value and volumes processed through our mobile money platforms. We processed $526 billion of transactions value over the last 12 months, which equates to a staggering $1.4 billion every single day. Our financial services revenue from our consolidated entities reached ZAR 16.8 billion in the year, up 20% in ZAR. The underlying growth trend of 23.1%, which adjusts for foreign currency exchange, reaffirms how quickly we are scaling financial services. With an additional ZAR 24.5 billion generated by Safaricom, this implies a combined fintech footprint that annualizes close to ZAR 41 billion or $2.2 billion. Overall, financial services contributed 12.6% to Group's consolidated service revenue.
This was supported by rapid revenue growth in Egypt as well. At Safaricom, which is an associate, the contribution increased again and reached 44.1% of Safaricom's service revenue. As I mentioned earlier, when we start consolidating Safaricom, we expect financial services to make up around 22% of service revenue. Looking at the contribution to profit before tax, which includes Safaricom as an associate, the weighting is getting closer to 30%. This bottom-line contribution of financial services means that Vodacom's investment case offers something quite different to a typical emerging market telco. Our South African business demonstrated resilience despite the challenging macro environment and increased competitive noise. South African revenue grew 2.1% to ZAR 92.6 billion, supported by the contract segment and beyond mobile services.
Beyond mobile services were up 6.8% and contributed ZAR 12 billion or 18.7% of service revenue. Customers were flat at 46.1 million as we optimized prepaid gross sales quality and churned inactive customers in prior periods. Data traffic increased 32.1% for the year, supported by smartphone penetration, new large prepaid data offerings, and our continued investment into network quality and spectrum. Looking at our key revenue drivers, mobile contract customer revenue increased by 3.5% to ZAR 25.2 billion, supported by good growth in consumer as we implemented another round of inflationary price ups with added value. Prepaid mobile customer revenue decreased 2.1% to ZAR 26.7 billion. Encouragingly, in the fourth quarter, the decline in prepaid mobile customer revenue moderated to 1.6%.
The sequential improvement reflected improved data revenue monetization. We expect a better performance from prepaid in FY 2027. Vodacom Business service revenue increased by 6.2%, supported by beyond mobile. For example, cloud hosting and security revenue increased 27.1%. EBITDA for the financial year declined by 1.7%. The result was impacted by a once-off cost incurred in the first half of the financial year. Encouragingly, EBITDA grew 1.8% in the second half of the financial year, with margins broadly flat, reflecting cost containment efforts. We invested ZAR 11.9 billion into our network to support network resilience and leverage our spectrum assets and enhance our IT platforms to maintain our competitive edge and remain South Africa's leading and most reliable network. We anticipate investment in capital expenditure of around ZAR 12 billion in FY 2027.
Egypt delivered another impressive performance with revenue of ZAR 41.4 billion, up 34.5% in ZAR. Service revenue was up 36.2% in local currency, while revenue was up 40.9%. Egypt now contributes 27% to the group. Growth was supported by strong commercial momentum and Vodafone Cash traction. Vodafone Cash contribution to service revenue increased 0.7 percentage points from the prior year to 8.7%. Egypt's customer base of 52.5 million was up 8.8%, supported by NPS leadership. Data traffic was up 25.9%, supported by data customer growth of 9.3% to 34.4 million customers. Smartphones on the network were up 8.6% with penetration reaching 82%. Egypt continues to scale its beyond mobile services for the year.
Financial services revenue was ZAR 3.1 billion, accounting for 8.7% of service revenue. In local currency, Vodafone Cash service revenue was up an impressive 48.2%. This was supported by financial service customer growth of 28.5% to 14.7 million customers. Egypt contributed ZAR 18.6 billion to Group EBITDA or 29.7%. In the second half of the financial year, EBITDA was impacted by foreign exchange trading losses. Operating profit growth was 55.4% in local currency, supported by net income growth of a resounding 56.2%. In rands, net income was up an equally impressive 49.9%. Capital investment into this market was ZAR 6.4 billion and represented a capital intensity ratio of 15.4%. Capital expenditure supported capacity and coverage, including the launch of 5G services during the year. In addition, we announced the acquisition of 20 MHz of 1800 MHz spectrum.
This spectrum augments Vodafone Egypt's leading spectrum position and will support us in capturing the significant latent data demand in the country. Looking into FY 2027, we were pleased that a double-digit price increase was granted. These are critical to supporting the industry's continued investment and sustainability. Revenue for our international business increased 8.4% on a reported basis to ZAR 35 billion, supported by excellent M-PESA and data growth. On a normalized basis, service revenue grew 14.4%. From a market perspective, we delivered local currency service revenue growth of 21.8% in Tanzania, 13.8% in Lesotho, and 13.7% in USD in the DRC. Mozambique had a better year, growing service revenue at 3.3% in local currency as the business lapped repricing initiatives. Customers were up 11.8% for the segment to 67.1 million, and pleasingly, we posted voice revenue growth in DRC, Lesotho, and Tanzania in the fourth quarter.
International business data revenue was up, was ZAR 10.5 billion, up 18.7%, and contributed 31.2% of service revenue. This year, data revenue exceeded voice revenue for the first time in our international segment. The growth in data was supported by strong commercial momentum as we added 3.5 million new data customers in the fiscal period to end at 31.3 million customers. Data traffic of 32.8% across the portfolio was supported by an 18.9% smartphone user growth to reach a penetration of 42.9%. Still a big opportunity for growth. M-PESA revenue was up 18.4% to ZAR 9.9 billion, contributing 29.4% of international business service revenue. Across all our markets, growth in M-PESA was double digit. Merchants increased 32.3% this year, and the M-PESA app is live across all markets with mini apps rollouts are ongoing.
Our new growth areas for M-PESA referred to as beyond core, which includes lending, insurance, saving, and merchant services, continued to gain traction and contributed 46.4% of M-PESA revenue. Loans facilitated across our international business increased 13% to ZAR 26.7 billion, highlighting the traction of our dual-sided M-PESA strategy, which provides solutions for both consumers and merchants alike. International EBITDA was ZAR 12.1 billion and increased by 31.6% on a normalized basis. This growth reflected strong operational leverage and a soft competitive period for the DRC. Tanzania growth of 38.8% was particularly strong, given it absorbed once-off costs in the period related to a radio access network swap-out. Capital expenditure increased 26.4% to ZAR 5.6 billion, representing an intensity ratio of 15.9% in our international markets. We continued to invest into 4G coverage and performance, adding 1,014 new 4G sites over the year. 4G sites were up 12.3% year-on-year.
In the period, we also acquired 50 MHz of 3.6 GHz spectrum in Tanzania. Safaricom delivered an excellent year. Safaricom's net income attributable to equity holders grew 37% as a result of Kenya's operational excellence and improving scale in Ethiopia. Service revenue for the Safaricom Group increased 11.5% in shillings, underpinned by double-digit growth in Kenya and accelerated growth in Ethiopia. Safaricom's EBITDA increased 27.9% in shillings as losses in Ethiopia narrowed. Service revenue in Kenya was up 10%, underpinned by excellent M-PESA revenue growth of 13.4% and the customer base continuing to grow at 20.1% to 57.9 million. The M-PESA result was driven by strong customer growth of 14.5% and ongoing platform engagement. The volume of M-PESA transactions in Kenya grew 25% off a large base to 46.4 billion transactions.
Kenyan mobile data revenue grew 14.4%, surpassing the KES value of voice revenue in the year. The growth was supported by customer and traffic growth with strong adoption of 4G devices. In Kenya, EBITDA grew 13.7% with margins at 56.7%, expanding 2.7 percentage points. Switching to Ethiopia, customers reached 13.6 million, up 54%, with sites growing to 3,500. Service revenue and local currency increased 131%, supported by good customer growth and acceleration of voice revenue growth. The pricing improved in the second half and is expected to continue into FY 2027. Recently, the Communications Authority of Kenya moved towards a unified 25-year licensing framework. Safaricom was awarded 25-year spectrum and operating license under this framework. This is a great outcome and provides regulatory certainty for the business.
It gives me a great pleasure to unpack our results for the year ended 31st March 2026. Whilst I will only speak to a handful of my slides today, I urge you to download the full slide deck from our website. Fortunately, the message across my slides is consistent one, and we have had an excellent year, really excellent year, with healthy improvement across all our key metrics. My opening slide captures the key financial metrics for our group. Group service revenue and EBITDA, which increased 10.6% and 12.8% respectively, reflecting a clear acceleration in our growth profile. This level of rand growth also represents a resilient rand during this tough FX environment. Our Beyond Mobile services continue to grow pleasingly underpinned by financial services.
As we move into our next strategic phase, our Vision 2030, we set an ambition of reaching a 30% contribution from beyond mobile, which is enabled by strong growth. Our EPS grew an impressive 22.9% to ZAR 0.1053 per share. Egypt, our international business, and Safaricom contributed to the strong earnings growth, a key benefit of our diversified business. I was particularly pleased with our return on capital employed result. Our ROCE was 27.5%, up 4 percentage points. This reflects a good capital allocation and a widening gap to our cost of capital. As a reminder, we've included ROCE in our management's LTI targets. Our balance sheet remains in a healthy position and ready to execute on the Safaricom transaction.
Leverage measured as net debt to EBITDA was a healthy 1 times, and this increased from 0.9 times in our prior period, mainly as a result of Egypt's spectrum acquisition and the massive fiber transaction in South Africa. Our free cash flow also delivered strong growth, which I will cover in more details later in the presentation. Pleasingly, to close out this slide, we further enhanced shareholder returns, increasing the final dividend per share by 20.9%, bringing total dividends for the year to ZAR 7.35, and this is an increase of 18.5% for the year. In the fourth quarter, our double-digit growth momentum was sustained with group service revenue up 10.9% on a normalized basis year-on-year, in line with our expectations.
South Africa service revenue grew 2.8% in the quarter, a clear improvement on the prior quarter supported by prepaid. Service revenue for our international business grew 3% on a reported basis to ZAR 8.1 billion in the quarter. This result was impacted by a strong rand with normalized growth exiting at a high of 15.6%. Egypt delivered service revenue of ZAR 9 billion in the quarter. Growth remained strong but moderated as expected to 23.6% in local currency as we lapped the price increase in December 2024. Our group free cash flow was ZAR 21.8 billion in the year. This is equivalent to equity free cash flow and reflects cash available to equity holders after dividends paid to minority shareholders. The chart on the left provides a track record of our cash generation over multiple years.
This should provide comfort that Vodafone has a track record of cash generation even in turbulent macroeconomic conditions. When macro conditions are stable, we are well-positioned to deliver handsome double-digit growth. This also reflects our ongoing CapEx efficiency programs that leverage the broader Vodafone Group scale in areas such as procurement. Free cash flow increased by an impressive 20.1%. This was driven by strong operational performance with EBITDA delivering ZAR 7.1 billion of incremental cash generation. The growth was achieved alongside continued investment in the business, with CapEx increasing by ZAR 3.4 billion year on year while absorbing higher tax, demonstrating the strength, sustainability, and resilience of the group's cash flow profile. Headline earnings per share grew 22.9% to ZAR 0.1053 per share.
On a reported basis, the second half performance of 16.1% growth appears to have slowed from the first half. However, this was not the case on an underlying basis. In the first half, we left one-offs on, in DRC and in Ethiopia relating to bad debts and devaluation effects, respectively. Accounting for this, the second half growth rate accelerated from the first half. Additional factors supporting half's growth include strong performance from Egypt and Safaricom. Egypt posted net income growth of 56.2% in local currency and 49.9% on a reported basis in ZAR, supporting the group's result. Safaricom and associate grew net income attributable to equity holders by 37% in local currency as a result of Kenya's operational excellence and improving scale in Ethiopia. I mentioned our strong return on capital employed earlier at 27.5%.
This ROCE metric does not include any capital gains, it was not impacted by the gain on sale of our asset to MAZIV. It is a clean measure in that regard. However, if we had completed the MAZIV transaction in April 2025 rather than December 2025, our ROCE would have ended just below 26% given the impact of capital employed. From one excellent return metric to another, the board declared a final dividend of ZAR 4.05 per share, up 20.9%, bringing the total dividend for the year to ZAR 7.35 per share, which is up 18.5%. This is consistent with the group's dividend policy of paying at least 75% of our headline earnings. In December 2025, we closed the MAZIV transaction.
We believe this transaction will drive fiber expansion opportunities for South Africa, helping to bridge the digital divide. As part of the conditions, we have committed to passing an additional 1 million homes over the next 5 years. We also see exciting opportunities to connect more sites and businesses to fiber through Dark Fibre Africa. A book value for MAZIV of ZAR 12.2 billion is included in our associate line. This is largely comprised of the cash funding and the fiber assets that we injected into MAZIV. As expected, the transaction did not have a material impact on headline earnings in FY 2026. However, the disposal of our assets did result in a one-off book gain of around ZAR 1.1 billion in South Africa. This gain was not included in headline earnings, nor in our return on capital employed.
Looking ahead, we expect that MAZIV will have a modest dilutive impact on headline earnings for the first couple of years. This is largely attributable to the fair value uplift of assets recognized as part of the purchase price allocation, the PPA. The fair value uplift amounted to ZAR 3 billion for our 30% stake and will be amortized through the associate line over an average of 15 years. On the 4th of December 2025, the group announced the acquisition of an effective 20% shareholding in Safaricom, increasing Vodacom's shareholding to a controlling 55% stake from the current 35%. The acquisition provides increased exposure to Safaricom's compelling investment case, including financial services, and it complements Vodacom's Vision 2030 aspirations. On a consolidated basis, the transaction will enable the group to operate at significantly larger scale.
By combining Vodacom's existing growth engines and the free cash flow generation potential with Safaricom, the group is well-positioned to accelerate growth and deliver attractive returns with a portfolio of market-leading assets across Africa. As a result, we intend to provide an update on our Vision 2030 targets once the transaction closes. On the bottom right of the slide, we set out some of our medium-term expectations for the transaction. The outlook for earnings and return on capital employed will be influenced by the final PPA when the transaction closes. The PPA impacts the amount of intangible assets that are recognized and amortized in subsequent years. As things stand, we are already amortizing intangibles for the 2017 Safaricom transaction, i.e., that is when we acquired the 35%. As such, this is a top-up rather than starting from scratch.
We expect the amortization of intangibles will result in some modest earnings dilution in financial year 2027. In addition to the stake acquisition, we are also buying the right to receive future Safaricom dividends amounting to an equivalent ZAR 7.5 billion for an upfront payment of ZAR 5.4 billion. This transaction is also denominated in Kenyan shillings, and we expect to make a small margin out of it. We will pay a commercial Kenyan shilling borrowing costs, which will feed into our finance cost line. The offsetting income will be reported in the non-controlling interest line. Please reach out to our investor relations team for more help on this moving parts relating to the transaction.
Having outlined the strategic rationale and the key financial implications of the MAZIV and the Safaricom transactions, I now turn to the balance sheet, where these transactions do have implications for the group's capital structure. It is important to emphasize that the group's capital position remains strong despite the ongoing uncertainty in the operating environment as a result of the Middle East conflict. During FY 2026, we executed significant capital commitments, including spectrum investments and the MAZIV acquisition, without placing pressure on our balance sheet. This consistent track record of disciplined capital management underpins our ability to continue investing in strategic priorities, including the planned acquisition of a controlling stake in Safaricom from a position of balance sheet strength whilst effectively managing external uncertainties.
For FY26, the MAZIV investment increased net debt to EBITDA to 1 times from 0.9, reflecting the addition of approximately ZAR 10 billion of related cash and lease liabilities. Our leverage remains conservative and well within our stated framework. Looking ahead, the Safaricom transaction is expected to move consolidated FY27's net debt to EBITDA towards management's upper threshold of approximately 1.5 times. This increase will be funded through rand-denominated funding, comprising a combination of term debt and preference shares, which is consistent with our capital structure and funding strategy. In terms of borrowings, 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 remains at 92% floating rate.
As the outlook for interest rates remains uncertain, we remain alert to take advantage of attractive fixed rate opportunities should such opportunities prevail. By combining Vodafone's existing growth engines and free cash flow generation potential with Safaricom, the group is well-positioned to accelerate growth and deliver attractive returns. As mentioned, we intend to provide an update to our Vision 2030 targets once the transaction closes. In the interim, the group's medium-term targets are as follows with necessary business-as-usual modifications. Group service revenue growing double digit. The group EBITDA growing double digit. Group capital expenditure of 13.5%-14.5% as a percentage of group revenue narrowed from the previous construct. Group operating free cash flow growing double digit. The operating free cash flow target is new and provided to enhance shareholder visibility for management's long-term incentive related to this metric.
Before I hand over back to Shameel, I really want to take this opportunity to thank you and really thank my colleagues across all the OpCos in Vodafone for a really excellent set of results.
Vodafone is structurally well-positioned for growth and strong shareholder returns, as evidenced by these results. We are market leader across our footprint with a unique opportunity to drive digital and financial 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 scales means that we constantly deliver returns above our cost of capital. Looking ahead and leveraging these attributes, we have set clear targets for Vision 2030. Our customer base is at the heart of why we exist and key to our long-term success. To earn customer loyalty and deliver an exceptional experience, we will focus on simplified propositions. As we execute on this priority, we will strive to obtain NPS leadership in all our markets and reach an upgraded target of 275 million customers by 2030.
Vodafone has always been an innovative company. It's part of our DNA. As we innovate beyond mobile, we remain committed to driving inclusion and retaining market leadership. Smartphone penetration is a key enabler of inclusion and a priority for us. We have set ourselves a target of 75% by 2030. We also want to diversify our revenue mix, reflecting our role as an integrated solutions provider of choice, with the contribution of beyond mobile services towards 30% of group service revenue. Market leadership also extends to Fintech, where we will increase our financial service customer base to an upgraded 130 million by 2030. Finally, we believe that investing in our connectivity scale, differentiated platforms, and a future-ready workforce are strategic enablers for growth.
Our commitment to diversity remains strong with an ambitious gender target aimed at increasing female representation at management levels to 50% by 2030. This target excludes Ethiopia. We will continue to reduce energy consumption through efficiencies, alternative energy, and innovation. We have ambitious climate transition plans that sets a path for us towards net zero. We recognize the inherent tension between expanding connectivity and managing emissions, particularly in regions without reliable grid access. We leverage all these opportunities, we set ourselves a target to generate double-digit EBITDA and operating free cash flow growth in the medium term. Above all else, our next strategic phase, we will focus on simplifying and scaling our existing operations as we relentlessly pursue our purpose to connect for a better future. We look forward to engaging with you over the coming weeks on our Investor Roadshow.
This concludes my presentation. Thank you for your support.