Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the financial results announcement for Safaricom Group for the year ending 31st March 2024. On behalf of our board of directors who are represented in the room, the management team, and the staff of Safaricom Group, we thank you very much for joining us in person and virtually for this event. My name is Caroline Wambugu. I serve as the head of financial planning analysis and investor relations here at Safaricom, and I will be moderating this particular event. I'm glad we can meet in person and as we connect virtually and engage this morning, so feel free to join the proceedings. For those of us who would like to keep your social media followers updated, our hashtag today is #SafaricomFYResults, and it's appearing on your screen now, #SafaricomFYResults.
In staying committed to our promise of diversity, equity, and inclusion, our sign language interpreter today is Susan Ubaga. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me now to outline the agenda for this morning. We will start with remarks from Peter Ndegwa, our Chief Executive Officer, who will give a business overview delving into our purpose and strategy. Our Chief Finance Officer, Dilip Pal, will take us through the financial performance and results for the period under review. Following this, our Chairman, Adil Arshed Khawaja, will give his closing remarks. Thereafter, we will give all of you an opportunity to ask your questions, and in that session, we'll also allow those that are online to be able to do so. For those that are online, share your questions with us on the Menti platform. The code is on the screen, so the Menti platform, the code is 4500710.
I'll repeat that again, 4500710. That will be the platform that you will use to share your questions with us even as the session is ongoing, and we'll be ready to answer them during that particular time. Allow me now to welcome our Chief Executive Officer, Peter Ndegwa, to make his presentation.
Good morning. I thought in the room that I would get a better clap than that. Thank you very much. So fellow shareholders, representatives of the investor community, the board, management, and staff of Safaricom Group, members of the media and the online community, invited guests, ladies and gentlemen, good morning.
Good morning.
Good morning in the room.
Good morning.
Even those online can also say good morning. So thank you for joining us this morning as we release our financial results for the year ending 31st March of 2024. So at the onset, I would like to talk about the ongoing floods where 257 Kenyans have lost their lives and over 42,000 households have been displaced, affecting 165,000 Kenyans. On behalf of Safaricom PLC, I would like to console all the affected families and pray that the departed ones may rest in eternal peace. At Safaricom, we are at the forefront in supporting the affected families in partnership with the Kenya Red Cross. Through M-PESA Foundation, we've mobilized KES 30 million to support the initial relief efforts that include vital supplies, food, temporary shelter, medicines, and emergency medical kits in the affected areas.
We are also supporting the first responders and volunteers, and also including supporting specific communities that are severely affected with free communication packages. We will continue to provide support that positively impacts those facing adversity, and we'll make other announcements related to this in the coming days. I'll now start with an overview of the operating environment during the period under review. This year has been transformative for our company, set against the backdrop of a dynamic operating environment both in Kenya and our continued expansion into Ethiopia. We operated under challenging conditions in both markets. This was driven by global and local macroeconomic factors. I'll provide more details on Ethiopia later in my presentation. Starting with Kenya, the Kenyan shilling has been under pressure for most of the year, with recovery noted in quarter four.
We navigated an evolving regulatory landscape, including changes in taxation and mobile termination rates in Kenya. Even with food prices falling, our customers struggled to stretch their budgets. Let us now look at how we transformed lives during this period. Safaricom continues to be guided by our purpose of transforming lives. During this period, we accelerated our engagement across the globe to champion sustainability matters. We are transforming lives through bridging the digital divide and driving financial inclusion. We are intentional in addressing societal challenges by leveraging on technology for solutions in climate change, in health, in education, and agriculture, among others. During this period, we signed up the Forward Faster initiative, which calls on businesses to take measurable, credible, and ambitious action to accelerate progress on the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Through the Chapa Dimba and Safaricom Athletics Series, we also created opportunities for our youth to launch their sports careers. As the biggest supporter of Kenyan communities, we exhibited our purpose in our innovations and through our foundation's initiatives, including Ndoto Zetu, which is now open. Let us now look at environment, social, and governance, which we call ESG, in a bit more detail. Our commitment to society remains at the core of our operations. As a result of our various ESG initiatives, we've grown 1.5 million trees, whilst over 3.5 million have been directly impacted by our foundations in the year under review. In line with our commitment to environment conservation, we've so far converted 23% of our sites to solar, and you'll see acceleration in the coming year. This is in line with our net-zero target by 2050.
We remain keen to create a sustainable business through decarbonizing our operations and advancing the circular economy. Looking at our strategy house, we've successfully executed our third mission, which marked the penultimate year of our Vision 2025. By leveraging technology, we are making digital products more accessible and driving financial inclusion across the region. Let us now turn our focus on how we are executing our strategy. We've sustained growth across our business by understanding our customers and leveraging innovation. Customer segmentation, public sector digitization, investment in Big Data, and acceleration of our Agile journey are key drivers of the momentum that you'll see in our Kenya performance. We are now seeing more value from Big Data and analytics, with insights allowing us to serve our customers better. Agile has enabled us to deliver for our customers in a faster and more focused manner.
In Ethiopia, we continue to roll out a world-class network, which is now almost half the size of the Kenya network by number of sites. Ladies and gentlemen, let us look at some of the key performance indicators, starting with our support towards digitizing Kenya. We are collaborating with the Government of Kenya to enable the digitization of services and ensure no one is left behind. Under the financial empowerment, over 23 million Kenyans have benefited from the Hustler Fund and the Women Enterprise Fund. We worked with 11 county governments to develop efficiencies in revenue collection and in management via the county app. M-Pesa continues to promote financial inclusion, particularly the unbanked and the underserved communities. We are supporting the government by disbursing funds to over 200,000 deserving Kenyans under the Inua Jamii Program. Now, turning on our focus on our consumer business.
Using big data and analytics, we are offering customers personalized and integrated propositions that support their usage and lifestyles. On 4G, which is key, we've ensured our network covers almost every Kenyan. We've also added 3.6 million 4G devices onto our network during the previous financial year, of which our device assembly plant has produced over 300,000 4G devices within just five months since launch. We are seeing the benefits from our refreshed customer segmentation. As part of this strategy, we've launched Safaricom Hook, which is providing our youth a platform to find personalized services that suit their lifestyle. Looking at our mobile financial services business, as you'll see shortly, M-Pesa has had a robust growth evidenced by a 33.9% increase in transaction volumes. This is attributable to broadening our mobile financial services beyond payments.
Through solutions such as Pochi La Biashara, we continued or we provided our micro and SME with digital productivity tools. We have enhanced M-PESA's stability and reliability to offer our customers a worry-free experience while using the service. We continue to leverage on strategic partnerships to offer integrated value propositions, including and not limited to credit, savings, insurance, international money transfers, and global payments, among others. Let us now look at why we are positioned to be a partner of choice for large enterprise and micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises, which we call MSMEs. We are powering growth and innovation for our large and MSME segments through the Internet of Things, which is IoT, and ICT solutions. We are supporting MSMEs via the SME Digital Adoption Plan, which entails productivity tools such as cloud solutions. For large enterprises, we are scaling cloud and cybersecurity solutions paired with connectivity solutions.
We have 1.5 million connections under the Smart Water Metering Program so far, and over 13,000 micro and SMEs are benefiting from our SMEs Digital Adoption Products. Looking at our fixed business, our investment both from an infrastructure but also from our product development has paid off. We've driven affordability of our services by reducing pricing across all our fixed propositions by over 50%. We've simplified customer journeys. We've enabled our dealers to serve fiber customers, leading to improved customer experience. We've automated our incident management process to enable immediate outage notification. Also, we continue to invest in 5G with those over 770 sites serving customers, primarily in urban and peri-urban areas. Our strategy execution and initiatives have been recognized and awarded. The awards and affirmations, which you see on the screen, are an affirmation of the work we put in and our continued focus on the customer.
The celebration and recognition across various sectors reaffirms our commitment to running a sustainable business. Core values such as sustainability, creating a diverse and inclusive environment, and caring for our employees are at the heart of our company. We are honored to have been recognized for them. Now, turning on our focus to Ethiopia. Whereas we faced a challenging operating environment, we are encouraged by the positive engagement and support received from the Government of Ethiopia and the regulators. We are glad to note the improved macros, including easing inflation and GDP projected to grow at 6.1%. On the regulatory front, the review of the MTR, which we call Mobile Termination Rates, charges from 0.3 ETB- 0.3 ETB from 0.31 as from 1st May is a positive step.
As we look at the key takeaways of the Investor Day held in February 2024, I want to thank all stakeholders, some of whom are present in this room, who joined us in Addis. During our Agile Investor Day, we have reaffirmed our view of Ethiopia as a land full of opportunities and critical to our future. The youthful population, coupled with low mobile penetration and rapid economic growth, gives us confidence in this market. Our view is reinforced by the growth in both customers and usage. Let us now look at what we have achieved in Ethiopia. We've doubled our 90-day active customer base to 4.4 million in the year, with 64% of these customers being active data customers. Our mobile data is a key proposition in Ethiopia, with usage per chargeable data subscriber averaging 4.3 GB, which is now ahead of Kenya.
We've recruited and onboarded agents and merchants to aid the rollout of M-PESA services, which has already registered 4.5 million customers. We are building a world-class network that is currently almost the size of what Kenya's network is. Looking at our Ethiopia medium-term outlook, we remain focused on growing the quality of our subscriber base, both for GSM, which is our connectivity business, and for mobile money. We are accelerating M-PESA penetration in the market. We are also monetizing opportunities such as mobile data, which has recorded very high usage. We are grateful to the Ethiopian regulators and the Ethiopian government, including the Prime Minister, for their support in ensuring a level playing field in the sector. We are fully committed to scaling our operations to support Ethiopia's digital future. So how did we perform during the 2023-2024 financial year?
I'm sure that's what many of you have been waiting for to hear. So you're wondering, "Peter, should we stop all the stories? We should just go to the financial performance." We had an outstanding year in Kenya. And I repeat that, we had an outstanding year in Kenya. We also outperformed group guidance, which was a revised guidance at half-year at a group level. And remember, we revised our guidance at half-year; we revised our guidance by $80 million at a group level. And we are also encouraged by our commercial progress in Ethiopia, as you'll have seen. Our Kenya operation is now a $1 billion business. And this is not a top line. It's a $1 billion business in earnings before interest, taxes.
So what we call earnings before interest and taxes, which is EBIT, which has hit KES 140 billion, which is a 20% growth year-on-year. I think we should clap again. So we are now billionaires, yeah, in dollars. I should have said the currency is important. So on a consolidated basis so that's the Kenya business. On a consolidated basis, incorporating the startup costs in Safaricom Ethiopia, the group closed on an earnings before interest and taxes of KES 94.9 billion, which is a 3.5% growth year-on-year. And I need to emphasize this. This is a remarkable growth after having registered a negative performance last year in FY23, which is financial year 2023, and having delivered a higher-than-guidance of KES 93 billion, excluding what we call hyperinflation, which Dilip will explain.
It is incorporating all the startup and investment costs that we have incurred in Ethiopia. On an overall group, service revenue grew by 13.4% year-on-year, so double-digit growth to KES 335 billion. Now we are already seeing the contribution of Ethiopia coming through, and you'll see that when the CFO presents. Our group net income, excluding minority interest, recorded a growth of 1.2% year-on-year. We expect from financial year 2025, Ethiopia will start being a significant growth contributor for top line and an accelerator on the bottom line. At this juncture, I want to hand over to our CFO, Dilip, to come and talk to us on the performance of our business overall and also Kenya and Ethiopia in greater detail. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Peter. Morning, everyone.[Foreign language] . I was wondering whether I need to present any other numbers after this last slide, but I still think there is a lot more to talk about. So let me first start by acknowledging, once again, the great results that we have seen in Kenya and the commercial momentum that Peter mentioned about for Ethiopia. So in the next half an hour or so, I will provide an overview of our accomplishments in greater detail. And as all of you know, the results material will be available in our websites pretty soon, so you can have access to that. As you have seen, there is definitely a flavor of what Ethiopia has done and what Kenya has done.
So I want to start with Kenya, and then I will come to Ethiopia so that we are able to explain and make you understand the drivers which have led to these outstanding results. Very strong set of results in Kenya. The year, which was characterized by tough economic headwinds, high inflation, rising energy costs, and a weakening Kenyan shilling. The good news is that some of this has started to ease off, especially during the last quarter, although the negative impact of that was mostly felt in FY24. This year also had some notable developments, starting with mobile termination rate change. As you remember, in August 2022, the rate was dropped from KES 0.99- KES 0.58. That continued till February 2023. And from March for the next two years, the rate has now been reset at KES 0.41 from KES 0.58.
So the impact of that in financial year 2024 itself was KES 1.2 billion. On a positive note, the reintroduction of charges for M-PESA transactions to and from banks enhanced our M-PESA revenue. Overall, as Peter mentioned about our strategy execution in the different business segments, we have delivered some impressive results in Kenya. Double-digit service revenue growth, 11.7%, adjusted with MTR, goes up to 12.1%. And double-digit growth in all financial metrics, be it EBITDA, EBIT, and net income and operating free cash flow. So we already clapped for EBIT. You can also clap for EBITDA. We posted KES 187 billion of EBITDA, a growth of 16.6%. Yeah. Net income of KES 85 billion, a growth of 13.7%. And operating free cash flow of KES 129 billion, close to $1 billion mark, not yet there, but very close to $1 billion of earnings before interest and tax.
Now, moving into the numbers into more details. So how did we get this double-digit revenue growth? The growth came from impressive business segments growth from M-PESA, mobile data, and fixed data revenue, where we had high single-digit to high double-digit to double-digit growth across all segments of the revenue. The second half of the year registered 14.8% year-over-year growth. You'd remember when you released our half-year results, our service revenue growth was 8.5%. So there was H2 was a better momentum from H1. I will also give more explanation across all revenue lines in the upcoming slides. The chart on the right side, it shows the evolution of our revenue contribution. As you can see, M-PESA now contributes 42.4% of our service revenue. You can also see something which you have not reported this way. We are calling this as connectivity revenue.
As you know, voice and messaging is always under pressure. It'll continue to be under pressure. We will see a corresponding growth in mobile data. Combining all of this, we wanted to show how that contributes and how is the growth profile. The connectivity revenue contributes 52.7% of revenue, which includes voice, messaging, and mobile data. That's growing 6.2% year-over-year. Now, if you go back historically, this is the one line where we have not grown more than 3% over a long period of time. This is, again, a significant uplift in terms of growth driven mostly by mobile data. Now, starting with customer, our one-month customer growth was 4.6% year-over-year. Now, we tasked 34.6 million customers.
We have been optimizing our pricing to ensure that customers can still utilize our services and enjoy the value being on our network in meeting their day-to-day needs. Rate per megabits, which has been under pressure over a long period of time, it declined 61% in the last four years. But in the last financial, it recorded a decline of 4.6%, which is the lowest that we have seen. Voice rates are down 40.4% in the last four years. The reason I'm emphasizing this is also to acknowledge, to ensure that you all understand how we have been providing more values to our customers. And that is what is giving us the engagement with the customers in terms of the usage that you see I talk about later. We have revised down our M-PESA tariff by approximately 61% when you reintroduced charges from bank and to the bank.
All of this is what has resulted into a if you can see that the 1-month active customers, ARPU, grew by 8.6%. So it's an overall growth story. Customers grew, usage grew, led to an ARPU growth. And that's how the revenue growth came up. Now, starting with M-PESA, which is, of course, the major growth engine, contributed 66% of the incremental growth for last financial year. And by the way, that's lower than that we have seen in terms of incremental growth despite growing 19.4% simply because the other segments of revenue are also growing. 19.4%, we haven't had this in a normal year over a long period of time. Of course, it got benefited by return to charging, where you got benefit for nine months. Within M-PESA, we have seen better traction in the second half of the year.
The revenue growth of M-PESA grew 22.1% in the second half compared to 16.5% in the first half. I mentioned about return to charging. I'll talk about you'll see that how the increased usage has also developed has also helped us growing M-PESA revenue. And in the second half of the year, M-PESA ARPU grew by 20%, which has led to ARPU growth of 16.1% year-over-year. Overall, payment ecosystem have done extremely well. The consumer payments grew 15.4% driven by increased volume. As you know, this is one of our bread and butter revenue streams within the M-PESA segments, still growing double digits. Business-related payments have an extraordinary year, growing 39.8% year-over-year.
Global payments, which is a smaller portion of M-PESA, about 2.5% of the revenue, have been growing on a double digit, high double digit for a long period of time, have grown 20% in the last financial years. We are now present in 200 markets across the globe on our platform. Financial service category, on the other hand, has declined, which are basically the credit products, shown a decline of 9.2% year-on-year, primarily due to price optimization of our Fuliza product. If you exclude Fuliza, the revenue grew 23.9%. I repeat, financial services declined 9.2% because of price optimization that we have done in Fuliza. But excluding Fuliza, we have grown 23.9%. But on Fuliza, it was all about affordability and allowing more customers to have access and also a higher value of disbursement, which was reflected in the growth of disbursements by 18.9% year-over-year.
The Fuliza disbursement touched KES 834 billion in the last financial year. Still on M-Pesa, we have introduced something we have not shown you before. Probably you all do the calculation. But we thought this time around, let us present to you what we call M-Pesa monetization. It's nothing but the effective rate that we get on every transaction on M-Pesa. So this chart basically shows the chargeable transactions that we have for M-Pesa, what is the monetization rate. So overall, M-Pesa monetization for the full year, the way it is calculated, it's 62 basis points or 0.62%, remained more or less stable. And this is on chargeable transactions. But on overall transactions, we are at about 35 basis points. And it is quite natural because 43.5% of transactions are still free. And we believe that will continue to be free. So it is all about volumes.
And you'll see how volumes and values have contributed to the traction in the transactions and the revenue growth in M-Pesa. So just to keep key highlights on the new growth areas within the M-Pesa, we made some very good progress in the areas. Lipa Na M-PESA, both Lipa Na M-PESA agents and Pochi La Biashara agents, Pochi La Biashara has actually the numbers have doubled. The number of Pochi La Biashara deals doubled in the year. And combining Lipa Na M-PESA and Pochi La Biashara, this mix of 21% of the business payments is actually contributing 11% of the growth in M-Pesa, which is quite credible. Lipa Na M-PESA itself grew 38.2% to touch now KES 7.3 billion shilling revenue in the last financial year. So we continue to invest and drive innovation of new products as we increase our service offerings to our customers.
Now, as I mentioned about usage, if you can see this on this chart, I'll start with the volumes and values. We continue to expand our ecosystem in M-PESA. The total value and volume of M-PESA transactions grew 9.6% and 33.9% year-on-year, reaching KES 40.2 trillion in value and 28.3 billion transactions in the last financial year. As I mentioned, 43.5% of value and 56.9% of volume of these transactions are non-chargeable, mostly the transactions reflecting we call that Kadogo transactions, P2P transfer of 100 KES, or Pochi La Biashara or merchant payments up to 200 KES, those are free. That's what it contributes. We believe that's how the affordability is driven into the M-PESA ecosystem. That's helping and supporting to grow the M-PESA ecosystem bigger and broader every year. The bottom right chart shows the chargeable transactions, which is what drives the revenue in M-PESA.
The transactions value grew by 52.5% and volume grew by 45.6%. The most important KPIs for M-PESA to look at is chargeable transactions per customer per month. Not too long ago, pre-COVID, we were about 10-12. The year now we have closed, we reached 31.5 for the whole year, a growth of 33.9%. We closed last year with 23.5 transactions per customer per month. This year, we closed at 31.5 transactions per customer per month. That's what has driven, as I mentioned before, a 16.1% ARPU growth in M-PESA. Now, another growth area for us and something we are very proud of, our journey to digitize payment platform and embrace technological innovation is on track. M-PESA Super App plays a pivotal role in this digitization. The Consumer Super App, which is on the left side of the chart, is gaining traction with 9.6 million downloads.
3.6 million of those customers are active customers. Last financial year, we generated KES 11.3 billion in revenue from Consumer Super App, which is a 68.7% growth year-over-year and contributing 8% of M-PESA's overall revenue growth, contributing 8% of M-PESA's overall revenue. Consumer Super App has facilitated 780 million transactions, totaling KES 2 trillion in value. This is, again, a growth of 59.4% year-over-year. These are big numbers. And you'd recall, Super App is not necessarily we have not launched it long back, just two years. So the traction, the momentum it's gaining is quite credible. On the Business Super App is also quite good. We have 1.5 million downloads and over 140,000 active customers, generating KES 663 million in revenue, facilitating 53.1 million transactions valued at KES 505 billion. And this has more than doubled compared to the last financial year.
Normally, we provide more details on M-PESA, which you'll see in our results booklet, which will be published pretty soon. Coming to another growth engine for us, which is mobile data, which has done exceptionally well in the last financial year, growing 18.2% year-over-year, and contributing almost one-third of the incremental growth that came in the last financial year. Again, the second half of the year was better than the first half. We grew 23.2% in the second half compared to 12.5% in the first half. We, again, have a very balanced story. We have customer growth of 13.9%, usage growth, and that led to ARPU growth of 1.5%. Smartphone users have grown by 13% year-over-year now to touch 22.9 million. And 76% of those are now 4G-enabled handsets, reaching now 17.5 million customers.
I'm also happy to share that it's still small, but 670,000 of those 4G-plus devices are 5G devices. That's also growing in our ecosystem. I mentioned about rate per megabits. That has declined 4.6%, which is the lowest that we had in the recent years. We continue to support customers in acquiring 4G-enabled devices through our affordable Lipa Mdogo Mdogo proposition, which we call LMM. This has enabled over 1.2 million customers to enjoy more features at their convenience along with open market partnerships. With the launch of affordable 4G smartphone local device assembly, we believe a significant boost in smartphone penetration is likely to come in the near future. These developments signify our commitment to enhancing customer experience and fostering greater connectivity in the digital age. Now, coming to fixed revenue, overall fixed revenue grew 12% year-over-year, still double-digit growth.
And it's one of our growth engines. Within that, Fiber-to-Home contributes 42.9% of the fixed revenue, have been growing much faster at 31.1%, and also adding customers, almost one-quarter, 27% growth in the customer base to reach a half a million sorry, 250,000 homes in the last financial year. These advancements highlight our commitment to enhancing our fixed service offerings, expanding our customer base, and venturing into promising technological domains. The last but still important segment of our business, voice and messaging, we have consistently as I mentioned before, we have consistently optimized our pricing to ensure that our customers can enjoy the most value at competitive price points. This approach has been our long-term commitment and has given us significant results in the way we have seen the voice revenue development over the years. For the full year, voice revenue declined by 1.7%.
But within that, we had a decline of 3% in the first half, but an improvement in the second half, more or less stable at a 0.5% decline. We have seen, which is very different from some of the countries, the advanced countries where usage is going down, we see a growth in our usage in voice as we are optimizing prices and offerings, a 15.9% voice usage growth to an average of 189.4 minutes in the last financial year. One star per performer, and let's not forget about something called messaging, which still exists. And close to 22 million customers are active on a monthly basis. That's growing 8% year-over-year. And just to remind all of you, this is the second year of messaging revenue growth we have seen after probably a decline of three, four years in the past years.
Through our integrated bundle offerings, we managed to bring this back on track and managed to stop the decline in revenue. Looking ahead, I think this is voice and messaging is one of the areas that we need to keep watching, the way it has happened in other markets. That's why you're talking about connectivity revenue. The voice messaging revenue gets replaced by mobile data revenue. And overall, we have to see that that's growing as per our plan. And as I mentioned, that's grew 6.2%, connectivity revenue grew 6.2%, driven by customer growth as well as by ARPU. So that was on the top-line side on Kenya. Now, coming to the cost, I mentioned about the macroeconomic challenges that, of course, gets reflected in our cost. Starting from operating costs, which is on the right side of the chart, as you can see, it grew 11% year-over-year.
That growth is majorly driven by increased network operating cost, lease cost, and foreign exchange losses. If we remove the energy cost, which has grown, the rate's gone up by 40% year-over-year. The operating costs would have grown by 4.3%, which is lower than the inflation in the country. On the left side, you see the direct cost growth. It shows a decline of 0.7%. This is majorly driven by the decline in the device sales. But if you normalize, if you take out the impact of device cost, it grew by 3.6%, still much lower than typically the direct cost growth that you see in conjunction with the revenue growth. And I wanted to remind you, remember we spoke about return to charging.
So when return to charging happened, it's not only boosted our revenue, it did also help to see a commission optimization in the M-PESA ecosystem because of deposit volume reduction. And we were not earning any revenue through deposit. We still don't earn any revenue on deposit. But the commission we are paying before has come down. And that's why you see a much lower growth in direct costs, excluding handset cost. On debt and finance cost, the one area I want to highlight is the interest cost, which is a major area of concern. We have seen interest cost because of interest rates. Our debt level is more or less stable, whether it is gross debt or net debt in whatever you calculate. But because of interest rate, as you can see, the interest cost has grown over 45% year-over-year.
As you know, the Treasury rates have gone up significantly compared to last year. That's what's reflecting. We have enhanced our debt portfolio by sustainability-linked loan, which took about KES 15 billion last year. Normally, the rates are lower because these are also linked with our ESG goals. And in any case, we are doing very well on ESG. So that also helped us to cushion some of the interest rate burden that we have last year. And on a more positive note, our net debt to EBITDA at 0.29-0.3 is probably one of the best that you can compare the similar size of telco across the globe. On cash flow, very healthy growth of free cash flow grew by 15.7%, touched KES 76.1 billion. And as you can see, it's majorly driven by the EBITDA growth.
This free cash flow growth is what enables us to invest more in CapEx, invest in Ethiopia. That's what we have been doing through the growth in free cash flow. On financial KPIs, just over the last four years, our Kenya performance indicators remained very strong and resilient. Our innovations and customer propositions are supporting top-line and increasing our revenue. Our productivity initiatives have helped us to cushion the growth and the cost side and delivering more values to our customers and also improving margins. In FY 2024, our EBITDA margin, we closed at 54.7% and EBIT margins at 40.7%. This is the best improvement and the best that we had in the recent history. Our OPEX intensity at 17.4% is quite stable compared to any other benchmark telcos. Our return on capital employed at 70% is probably one of the best in the telco.
But this also gives us enough headroom for us to invest and give more return to our shareholders. Now, coming to Ethiopia, I want to dwell a lot on some of the things that Peter has already mentioned about, especially starting with the revenue profile. This revenue is beginning to add to the overall story for the group. We had KES 5.4 billion Kenya shilling equivalent revenue last year in Ethiopia operations. And 73%, 72.6% of the revenue is mobile data. So 72.6% mobile data revenue is actually what is helping us to grow because that's the network that you're building in Ethiopia. And that's visible in terms of service revenue growth, in terms of one-month active ARPU growth, and also the usage that Peter spoke about. On customer and usage, I won't dwell a lot. Peter has already spoken a lot about this.
As you can see, we have now touched 2,806 sites. Then especially on the usage side, as you can see, 90-day active data users touched 2.8 million. And that's almost 70% of the voice users. Then data usage per GB was 4.3 GB per customer per month. Now, from a funding perspective, let me start with the CapEx. So at the end of FY 2024, our cumulative CapEx investment in Ethiopia was $853 million. And we spoke about in our previous results release and including in our February roadshow, a five-year CapEx level of $1.5 billion-$2 billion. Now, with the level of achievements, with the level of traction that we had so far, with 2,800 sites which you have and the scalable number of sites that you will have, we believe the five-year CapEx numbers is possible within $1 billion-$1.3 billion.
So we are revising it down, our outlook for the CapEx for the first 5 years, which is the peak investment period from $1.5 billion-$2 billion to $1 billion-$1.3 billion. And we've spoken about 10,000-12,000 base stations in 10 years' time. We are talking about 8,000-10,000 base stations in 10 years. And we believe this will be sufficient to take care of our coverage obligation and also to give our customers the digital experience that we have promised and that we are providing already. In terms of funding, Ethiopia has been fully funded. They're well funded. So as on FY 2024, the total funding was $1.86 billion, out of which $1.6 billion was equity. And then we had $100 million of IFC funding and then local currency equivalent of $134 million.
Out of the $1.6 billion-$6 billion investment by cash equity, Safaricom share was $840 million. In addition, as we spoke about before, we are also utilizing deferred payment from our vendors. At the end of FY 2024, that amount was $301 million. Coming to group net income, Safaricom Kenya net income grew 13.7% year-on-year to KES 85 billion, majorly driven by our top-line growth. During the year, we had a hyperinflationary impact for Ethiopia, which we adjust in group income of overall KES 7.4 billion. And that is coming in combination of hyperinflationary monetary gain of KES 22.4 billion that you'll see in the income statement. And income statement line was restatement of KES 15 billion negatives. There is a gain of KES 22 billion and negative impact in the P&L line items of KES 15 billion.
That is what is leading to a KES 7.4 billion gain in hyperinflation impact in FY2024. Although we are seeing inflation coming down in Ethiopia, but consumer price index continues to be growing. That's why we needed to apply our IAS 29. That's what has led to the impact of KES 7.4 billion. Our group net income, excluding minority interest, Peter mentioned about it, grew by 1.2% year-on-year to KES 63 billion. I want to highlight about this. This is a reflection of startup losses from we are still in the investment phase, startup losses from Ethiopia, and the momentum that I spoke about for Kenya. In terms of CapEx, this is what drives our engine. This is what has helped us to build 2,800 base stations in Ethiopia. Overall group CapEx, we closed at KES 93.5 billion.
Within that split, it's almost 50/50 between Ethiopia and Kenya. As you can see, the green section sorry, the blue section in the pie chart, the majority of the investment is coming for radio access network, even for Kenya. But almost 2/3 of that is coming for Ethiopia. So this is what has supported our rollout and also improving our customer experience and additional rollouts in our 5G, which we have closed now, 906 sites as on the end of the financial year. Now, looking at overall performance for the group, once again, I want to reiterate outstanding performance in Kenya with impressive double-digit growth from top-line to bottom line. Ethiopia, first full year of operations, supporting top-line, growing from Kenya's 11.7% to a group of 13.4%. So it's an uplift from 11.7% to 13.4%, which is what Ethiopia is going to do in the future.
The numbers also reflect on a constant currency without translation loss. If I remove the translation loss, EBITDA actually grew for the group 19.2%. EBITDA almost flat. Group net income, excluding minority interest, growing by 4.2% year on year versus the reported growth, which you spoke about, Peter mentioned about 1.2%, which is very encouraging. I want to highlight here is something that is very important for you to take away. We believe the worst is behind us from a group financial point of view. Although you have seen Kenya's performance is extraordinary. When you report our group numbers, of course, we have seen some headwinds it has some tailwinds in the last two years. I want to confirm that worst is behind us.
When you see the group income or group numbers, you have to see Kenya separately and Ethiopia because Ethiopia is in an investment phase. Such a big greenfield with large investments is expected to have losses. We believe whatever losses Ethiopia had is within our expectation. As the business gains scale, Ethiopia will have a positive impact on our group performance in the coming years. Ladies and gentlemen, this brings me to the end of my presentation. We are very much looking forward to building on the gains we have made in the last financial year and before into the new financial year. Just to mention again that results materials will be available on our website shortly. Thank you for your time. I now invite Peter to give the additional remarks for FY25 guidance.
Yeah, you can clap a little bit more if you like. Thank you very much.
So, I'm wondering, where did they get that photo from? Did you see my photo? So, a clap for Dilip again, our CFO. When we were preparing for this, we were saying to the CFO, "You need to smile. It's very good numbers." So, great, Dilip is looking very, very, very happy. So, thank you, Dilip. And ladies and gentlemen, let me take now the moment to summarize the key drivers of these impressive numbers that Dilip has presented. We have delivered outstanding results amidst a tough operating environment, outperforming the group guidance, which was a revised one at H1, and in particular, stellar performance in Kenya. So, to summarize, we continue to have a strong and broad-based Kenya business as evidenced by the results.
We are encouraged by the commercial progress in Ethiopia, which will start being a significant contributor of growth both to the group, both at a top-line level, but also an accelerator at the bottom line given this is the highest peak cost here. We continue being a tech partner of choice for digitizing Kenya. The local device assembly, which we launched in the previous financial year, continues to accelerate the smartphone penetration, which is critical for us to make sure that everyone gets onto the internet and no one is left behind. We have seen real value from our investment in technologies. And we want to be a TechCo , such as big data and analytics, delivering greater value to our customers. So ladies and gentlemen, as you know, financial year 2025 is the end of the previous strategy horizon.
So this financial year marks the end of our Vision 2025, which is to create a purpose-led technology company. Together with the board, and you'll hear more from the chairman, we've identified our new vision and five-year strategy that we'll see as becoming Africa's leading purpose-led technology company by financial year 2030. Our key pillars to deliver this vision will be a focused approach to defending and growing our connectivity business. You heard the CFO referring to our connectivity business as it matures, especially in Kenya, but also accelerates in Ethiopia, but also our mobile financial services business, some of which is mature, but a lot of which are also growing. We'll also accelerate the transition to tech core whilst evolving Ethiopia into a full-scale, sustainable digital business. So what does this mean from an outlook perspective? And this is from the perspective of a medium-term outlook.
For Kenya, we expect to maintain the service revenue growth momentum with M-Pesa and fixed revenue expected to grow at double-digit. Our GSM, which is our connectivity business, should grow in high single-digit, which is a significant step up from the previous low single-digit. Our EBITDA should remain stable, including a stable CapEx intensity, which is CapEx percentage over the period. Ethiopia is still within expectation. You heard the CFO talking about it with respect to the medium-term, both in terms of expectation but also in terms of funding and investment. Ethiopia earning before interest, tax, and depreciation Ethiopia earning before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization - this is a finance term - is expected to break even, and this is important, within year four of its operation as we have guided before.
We expect to have 15-20 million customers with a network of just over 4,000 sites in the medium term in Ethiopia. Having looked at our next vision and the medium-term outlook, let me turn on to focus on what we intend to achieve in the current financial year, which is our new financial year, financial year 2025. Our focus is to embed customer-first. So customer will continue to be a critical enabler of how we look at our business. Customer-first tech capabilities, including capabilities of our people but also externally, as we work to being Africa's leading purpose-led technology company by 2030. So by the end of this financial year, we want to offer our customers a seamless, digital-first experience. In fact, I should say a seamless, always secure, always on. Some ExCos are smiling at me in front here. Always secure, always on, worry-free. Yeah? Worry-free.
Seamless, digital-first experience. We want to unlock more value through segmentation. The worry-free piece, you'll hear another announcement coming in the next month or so, especially on our M-Pesa business. We want to unlock more value through segmentation, which we have started the journey in financial year 2024. We'll invest in more tech capabilities, in particular within our organization so that we don't leave any employee behind. We are calling it two plus one. We'll scale the fixed business, which we need to accelerate to connect more homes and more businesses so that everyone has broadband connectivity in addition to mobile. We will keep the momentum for Ethiopia's commercial execution that you have seen. We have a CEO of Ethiopia. When we go to Q&A, we'll be able to answer more questions there.
So that is in terms of focus on financial year 2025 but also the medium-term outlook. Let me now turn to the guidance, which is for investors, for financial year 2025. So based on our performance and on the focus areas for the year, our financial year 2025 guidance is as follows. For Kenya, earnings before interest and taxes will range between KES 149 billion-KES 152 billion. For Ethiopia, the EBIT loss will be in the range of KES 46 billion-KES 43 billion. This brings the group EBIT guidance to a range of KES 103 billion-KES 109 billion, which is a significant growth if you compare it to financial year 2024. On CapEx, Kenya CapEx guidance is within the range of KES 52 billion-KES 55 billion, which is an increase of the current year as we continue to invest for growth in the future.
For Ethiopia, recognizing that we have had an accelerated CapEx investment in the past 2-3 years, our CapEx guidance will range between KES 21 billion-KES 24 billion, which is still a very significant increase as we target to get to 3,500 sites by the end of the year. So the group guidance, the group CapEx guidance, therefore, is the range of KES 73 billion-KES 79 billion Kenya shillings equivalent. Additionally, for Ethiopia, we guide more because it's a startup business. We'll continue to acquire or drive acquisition of customers. We are targeting to grow our 90-day GSM, which is our connectivity customers, to between 7-10 million customers and M-Pesa 90-day active customers at a range of 2.5-4 million customers. So in conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, we are very proud of what we have been able to deliver in financial year 2024.
I'd like to thank the chairman, Adil, and the board, many of whom are represented here, you can see some in the room and probably also online, for the support accorded to myself and also to my entire leadership team and the organization. To Safaricom Group staff, and we'll have another session with the staff later on, thank you for your hard work both in Kenya but also in Ethiopia that you have put in a tough environment. To all our stakeholders, especially our dealers, our agents, but also our suppliers, I thank you for your support and the confidence that you have shown in Safaricom. Finally, I want to thank our most important stakeholder, which is our customers. I want to thank our customers for their business, their loyalty, their confidence in us. They are the reason why we operate.
And we know there are some tough circumstances. And we'll continue to be with you whether through the way we offer our services, the way we drive the support, especially through our foundations for recognizing what is going on at the moment. I thank you very much for your continued support. So ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us physically. And for those joining us online, I want to thank you for your time [Foreign language] . Now, I want to welcome you don't want to clap. I want to I now want to welcome our Chairman, Adil, to make his closing remarks. Thank you very much.
Good morning, everybody. Just trying to get my machine open. I think my machine agrees too that there's nothing I can say after what Peter and Dilip have said. And we say, "Do I say?" These are excellent results. Esteemed shareholders, representatives of the investor community, the board, management, and staff of the Safaricom Group, members of the media, the online community, invited guests, ladies and gentlemen, good morning again and welcome. It's my pleasure and privilege to join you for the financial results announcement for the year ended 31st March 2024. As you have already heard from Peter and Dilip, despite the various challenges, we successfully steered the company to achieve the impressive results that we are announcing this morning. We witnessed a peculiar operating environment in Kenya. We pressed on with our expansion in Ethiopia and took all the startup obstacles in our stride.
The board is proud that despite the tough economic environment, the company has been able to perform extraordinarily well. We have registered positive returns for our shareholders. The board is delighted with the business performance, particularly emphasizing the notable double-digit growth in earnings before interest and tax. As mentioned by Peter, it's a proud moment for all of us at Safaricom to hit the $1 billion mark on EBIT. Ladies and gentlemen, this is no mean feat. There isn't another company in our region that has reached this. This is amazing. Firstly, I must acknowledge the unique conditions under which Safaricom has operated over the past year. In Kenya, like many other companies, we faced major macroeconomic challenges, high inflation, a weakening shilling, effects of the prolonged drought, and rising taxes. We navigated a rapidly evolving regulatory landscape.
We also had to contend with changes in taxation and mobile termination rates. We embraced the growing needs of our various stakeholders across Kenya and Ethiopia and continue to contribute meaningfully to their social and economic development. Our continued expansion in the Ethiopian market, signified by our belief in the potential of the business, was in keeping with our growth strategy. Despite the inherent challenges of establishing operations in a new market, and for that matter, one that has just opened up to competition, we have laid the foundation for a strong business relying on sustainable partnerships intended to positively contribute to Ethiopia's digital transformation. Ladies and gentlemen, I want to assure you that Safaricom remains committed in delivering value to all our shareholders. During the year, the board approved the payment of an interim dividend of KES 0.55 per ordinary share, which amounted to KES 22.04 billion.
The board has further resolved to recommend to shareholders at the forthcoming AGM in July a final dividend of KES 0.65 per ordinary share. This brings the total dividend payable for FY 2024 to KES 1.20 per share, which is equivalent to a whopping KES 48.08 billion. You will have noted that we are paying a similar dividend as last year despite registering the highest EBIT loss in Ethiopia. So you must see that Kenya business has really pulled its socks up. And we hope that it's only the beginning of things to come. Our current vision is to become a purpose-led technology company by the end of 2025. The Safaricom board, in conjunction with the management, have just completed the new business strategy to run until 2030. As earlier detailed by Peter, the vision charts a course towards becoming Africa's leading purpose-led technology.
For those of you who heard it, the addition is Africa. We have already dealt with East Africa, right? So we now want to go to Africa. In this financial year, we continue to come closer to the communities we serve. The board is committed to support management in running a sustainable organization driven by our purpose of transforming lives. Safaricom has been actively involved in supporting communities. As you know, Safaricom has been at the forefront of all Government of Kenya and private sector efforts to distribute relief food during the prolonged drought. And now, through our foundations, we are supporting communities who have been affected by the recent and ongoing floods. Just to add, which Peter didn't tell you, he's going to be leading the private sector initiative. So well done, Peter. I acknowledge the good work that both M-Pesa and Safaricom foundations have done this financial year.
I do look forward to seeing more of our board members participate and join the staff in activities that support our communities. As a board, we will continue working with all our stakeholders to ensure that our strategy, vision, and purpose reflect and meet the needs and expectations of the individuals, communities, and entities that are impacted by what we do. I would sincerely like to extend my appreciation to my fellow board members for their hard work, wisdom, and strategic guidance. Their insights and leadership have been instrumental in steering Safaricom to achieve these results. Thank you. On behalf of the board, I would like to commend the management team and all the Safaricom staff without whom we would have not been able to deliver these impressive results. The commitment of excellence and innovation of our staff is second to none. Did I add?
Did Peter highlight that we are the best employer and that we have the most engaged staff? So just keep that. At Safaricom, we place immense value on the relationships that we have with our stakeholders. We remain committed to collaborating with the government, regulatory bodies, policymakers, and all stakeholders to drive positive change and deliver sustainable growth. On behalf of Safaricom PLC, I would like to express our sincere gratitude to the governments of Ethiopia and Kenya for their support whenever we require it. The alignment of our strategy with the national programs has been a crucial ingredient to achieving our impressive results. We hope to continue to build on this. As I conclude, Safaricom's journey over the past financial year reflects resilience, innovation, and a deep commitment to our purpose. You've never heard us complain about the difficult economy. We just get on and do it.
As we expand our footprint into Ethiopia and continue to lead Kenya, we are confident in our ability to drive positive change and create value for our company, our customers, and the community we operate in. Lastly, customers, we owe you a share of this glory. You have contributed to it. And we assure you that we will continue to serve you and serve you better. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
Come on, give them a better hand. This is a billion-dollar business. And if I may echo the words of our chairman, the first company in this market to achieve that at earnings before interest and tax, $1 billion. Come on, let's give it a hand clap. We usually say that the apple does not fall very far from the tree. So you know who the apples are. And you're looking at one of them. So if it's a billion-dollar, what am I? A billion dollars, right? Yes. So let us ensure we benefit from this association. So ladies and gentlemen, we've come to the end of our FY2024 presentation. Another incredible year for the Safaricom family. We are so grateful for the trust and loyalty of our valued customers. Your support has always been and continues to be the driving force behind our continued success.
Through your feedback and partnership, we've been able to innovate and expand our services to better meet your evolving needs. We are energized by the opportunity to build an even stronger, more connected community. Your voices, as usual, and ideas will continue to be essential as we chart the next chapter of our growth and impact. Would like to spend the next 15 minutes or so for a quick Q&A. I know time is far much spent, but we'll try and maybe take a few questions from the room and online. I've seen just a few online. So let me remind our online viewers that you can please post your questions on the Menti platform. The code will be appearing on your screen shortly. The code is 4500710. The code again, 4500710. So let's get into Q&A.
So allow me to please welcome back on stage our Group CEO, Peter Ndegwa, our Group CFO, Dilip Pal, and indeed, our Safaricom CEO, Wim Vanhelleputte, for Q&A.
Peter, mic. You have the mic.
Think audience is spellbound with the results.
So we'll start with questions from the room before we go online. I'm looking around to see any raised hand. Anybody with a question in the room? We've got very little time to do this. Yes, please. Oh, that's Bella. Go ahead, Bella.
Morning. My name is Bella from Bloomberg. Congratulations on the strong set of numbers. I just want to speak to the Safaricom Ethiopia CEO on what impact the reduced mobile termination rates will mean for you as you try to scale and increase your customer base and talk about positive output numbers there, even as you're looking to get into break-even level in Ethiopia. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you for the question. So first of all, it's a wonderful development driven by the Government of Ethiopia with the regulator that the mobile terminating rates have been reduced quite significantly from ETB 0.31-ETB 0.23. That became applicable 1st of May. So we are just 10 days or nine days having implemented it. So what that means for us, it means that we become much more competitive in terms of our voice pricing. We are a small startup compared to a big incumbent. So to gain market share, you need to be very competitive in terms of pricing. It's logic, reality. So with these reduced mobile terminating rates, it allows us to offer voice packages that are much more competitive because the cost that we are incurring and a lot of our customers, of course, they want to call the other network.
So the cost that we are incurring with our competitive voice packages is now 35% less than it was prior to 1st of May. So we become more competitive for the customer. But also equally important, the cost that we are incurring to be so competitive is by far less than it was before. So we really believe that will allow us to gain market share, momentum, commercial momentum in the voice. You've seen our figures on data are very good. But on the voice, we are not yet there. But this will definitely allow us to catch up momentum on the voice.
Thank you. Thank you very much for that, Wim. I'll take a second question from the room before I go online.
The room is satisfied.
All right.
The room is speechless.
Okay. So, online, thank you very much for your comments and questions. I see someone here saying, "Great job, Peter and team. So well done." And then here, there is a question that says or reads like this, "Congrats on great results. What is your view on need for further cash injection, if at all, in Ethiopia for its CapEx and other cash requirements? And when do you expect this business to be cash break-even?" And I'll request our CFO, Dilip, to respond to that one. What is your view on need for further cash injection, if at all, in Ethiopia for its CapEx and other cash requirements? And when do you expect this business to be cash break-even?
I was hoping that this will be passed on to Wim. But thank you very much for the question. So reminding all of you what you have said before on Ethiopia's investment phase. And we call that peak investment phase is the first 5 years. And beyond the license investment which you have done for $1 billion, we spoke about a CapEx level of $1.5 billion-$2 billion before, which we are now saying we can still do what you intended to do within $1 billion-$1.3 billion, out of which $853 million has already been spent up to FY2024. So this gives you a ballpark of where we have to invest and what's the time frame.
So I can confirm you, the next three years are the years where we would be so the years which is what Peter has spoken about, medium-term outlook in terms of gaining the scale on customers, gaining the scale on infrastructure, which is what then allows us to get into that beyond EBITDA, the other break-even points. So that is coming from EBITDA to cash break-even. So within FY26, we'll have EBITDA break-even. And then subsequent to FY26, when we start having cash break-even. Therefore, FY25, FY26 are extremely important also in the context of first five years of investment. We are well on track in terms of the investment trajectory, although the operating environment has changed materially. And those of you who have been present on Investors Day in February, Wim spoke about acknowledging the new operating environment and how we are navigating those.
One is to make a business plan. Then another thing is to when you start delivering it. And that you saw the confidence around how we are now delivering with a different model. And one of the reasons why also you are able to optimize our CapEx is also to see a different way of delivering the same customer experience with a different type of base stations that we have been rolling out before. So there is a lot that has gone into the plan that we have made. So from a cash perspective, yes, this business will still have cash requirement. And majority of that cash requirement will be mostly dealt with in FY 2025 and in FY 2026. But we believe from FY 2027, the level of cash requirement in the business will go down significantly. And we start generating positive free cash flow.
Or you start reducing the cumulative cash flow and adding cash to the cumulative free cash flow. So that's all I wanted to say, reconfirm what we said in February investor roadshow. So you have seen the ambition is still what you want to deliver, but at a much lower cost than what you originally anticipated. Thank you.
Yeah. And just to add to Dilip's point, while the cash and funding is in line with what we expect to happen over the medium term, a primary priority both at PLC level but also in Ethiopia is to focus on ensuring we are on track on the commercial execution. So you said we've made huge progress on ensuring that we have a network that works. And it's a modern network. We are now almost where it's half of Kenya in just less than three years. And the second thing is now to accelerate customer acquisition, which is really important. If you go to Ethiopia today and I'm sure there's a lot of people calling in, including our employees from Ethiopia, the actual network service is much better than it used to be three, four years ago.
So by going into the market, by putting in a new network, by introducing a bit of competition, we've also elevated the kind of experience customers are getting. So beyond CapEx, which is important and is in line with what we expect, one of the most important is to make sure that we are playing our role in digitizing Ethiopia and ensuring that people get the right service and no one is left behind. The second is that there's still a lot of opportunity. There's still huge parts of the country and also consumer base that's not covered. So that's also the other element, which is ensuring that we cover new customers over time.
Yes. Thank you very much, Dilip and Peter. In the interest of time, I'll only take two questions. So one online. And I'll be coming to you in the room for one last question. So there's a question here to you, Peter, now that you have the mic. Nick Kanali from Tech Trends Media is asking, "So what are your plans to expand 5G adoption?
So when I presented, I said that we are everywhere with 4G in terms of connectivity and network. We estimate we are around 97%. We keep improving that because some of the sites as devices come into play, we might get congestion and so on. So we keep improving that. And that's why you see that we continue to invest in the network. The key with 4G, though, is to make sure that we continue to accelerate the acquisition of 4G devices. Because whilst we have the network, the devices are still behind. And we are very happy that we put in 3.6 million additional 4G devices. So EADAK, which is the device assembly, will play a big role going forward. On 5G, we need to be ahead of the technology. So we will put sites in Kenya. And the board has already approved an acceleration in terms of 5G.
We already have 770 sites. We are going to put a significant addition in the new year to be ahead of where devices are. You had Dilip saying we have now just slightly below 700,000 devices. So of course, we need to make sure that we put the network so that as devices become more affordable, then people can experience 5G. And then the second element is we use 5G also for fixed wireless in places where we don't want to put fiber. Or it may be more appropriate to put fixed wireless. So 5G is a significant component. So you see acceleration in 2025. And that is already included in the KES 51-54 billion guidance in terms of additional CapEx for Kenya.
Thank you very much, Peter. I'm looking around the room. One last question. Yes, Dr. Patricia.
Good morning. Very well done on those stellar results. My name is Dr. Patricia Murugami from Breakthrough Leadership Transformation. How do you intend to elevate and accelerate the use of AI as you become a tech co into the future?
Yeah. I think that is the topic we have every day. And you'll have heard from us presenting to say that we are very excited about our journey to being a purpose-led technology company. But actually now wanting to be Africa's leading technology company. There's no way and there's no company which is led from a technology perspective that is not leveraging AI. And so there are a number of things we've done. So first of all, we made huge progress in terms of ensuring we have the ability to actually call ourselves or rather have the ability to have the capability internally.
Today, we have up to 40 of our staff in what we call a center of excellence, which is data scientists, data engineers, who are providing the right models for us to use every day. I'll give you an example: fraud detection. We've been able now to start using AI on certain customer issues. Because at the end of the day, AI is only useful if we use it for real customer challenges. Now, as we go into this financial year and going forward, we want to democratize use of AI so that we are using it for experience. We are using it to offer better services. We are using it to simplify the way we operate, both internally but also externally. That's why we need then to elevate the capability.
We talked about everyone has the right capability of the future, whether that is AI skills or cybersecurity skills, the tech skills of the future. And we are calling it two plus one. So all our employees, by the end of this financial year, will have specific additional capability, including myself. So I'm studying on an AI course. And I have a coach internally who is helping me catch up. And when I'm behind, they tell me, "No, you're behind." So it's about ensuring that everyone is comfortable. All our employees are comfortable about what the possibility is, but also how they acquire those skills so that they don't feel they'll be left behind. But we are very excited about what we can do with artificial intelligence.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Peter. Once again, do appreciate our leaders for engaging us this morning. Please give them a hand clap. That brings us to the end of this morning's results release session. Thank you for your participation. Thank you for your questions. I know there's still some questions on Menti. I know we'll also be interacting with various ones of you in other platforms. Feel free to engage us in those platforms. For those that are not able to engage us in any other way, you can reach out to us through our email address, investorrelations@safaricom.co.ke. We'll also be able to respond to your questions. I also want to confirm that the results materials are now loaded on our website. Feel free to get in there, download them, engage with the material.
I'm sure even some of the questions I saw you will get your answers therein. Once again, we appreciate you for your participation and for your time in joining us this morning. On behalf of the Safaricom family, Asanteni Sana. Have yourselves a good day. Stay safe. Let us stay connected. Let us shine Kenya. Thank you. Goodbye.