Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and Welcome to the Half-Year Financial Results Announcement for Safaricom PLC for the period ended 30th September, 2024. On behalf of the Board of Directors, the Management Team, and the staff of Safaricom PLC and Group, we thank you very much for joining us this morning, personally and virtually also, 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'll be your moderator for the day. Should you like to keep your social media followers updated, our hashtag today is #SafaricomHYResults, #SafaricomHYResults, and is now displayed on your screen. And in staying committed to our promise of diversity and inclusion, our sign language interpreter today is Susan Ubaga. To kick us off, we will start with opening remarks by our Chairman, Adil Khawaja, followed by a presentation by Dr
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 then take us through the financial performance and results for the period under review. Thereafter, we will have a question-and-answer session for those in the room and also for you who are joining us online. For those online, share your questions with us on the Menti platform, that is the www.menti.com, and use the code one two nine seven seven six six five. I'll repeat: one two nine seven seven six six five , as it appears on your screen now. You may also scan the QR code for ease of access. Allow me now to introduce and indeed welcome our Chairman, Adil Khawaja, to make his presentation.
Thank you, Caroline. Chairholders, representatives of the Investor community. Sorry. Thank you, Caroline. Shareholders, the representatives of the Investor community, the Board of Safaricom, the management and staff of Safaricom PLC, members of the media, invited guests, ladies and gentlemen. Good morning and welcome. I would like to start today by celebrating Safaricom at 24, its staff, its key shareholders, former CEOs, former Chairmen, and Board members, past and present, for the superb work that they have done for the past 24 years. Over this period, we have not only connected Kenyans with reliable, safe, and secure telecommunication services but have rolled out cutting-edge products and services. We have played a leading role in enabling financial inclusion, digitizing the delivery of citizen services, and growing, enhancing, and always innovating the world-famous M-Pesa platform.
We have transformed lives through community initiatives, which have seen their most pressing needs addressed, as well as giving an opportunity for young people to grow their talents, careers, and ideas. I'm happy to be here this morning for the announcement of Safaricom's half-year results for the period ended 30th September 2024. This fiscal year is the last of our 2020-2025 strategy, where we seek to be Africa's leading purpose-led technology company by 2030. As a board, we are delighted with the performance of our Kenya business. Ethiopia is also making commercial progress as we continue to invest in a strong network using modern technology that now covers 46% of the Ethiopian population. Peter and Dilip, whom I'm sure you're all waiting to hear from, will give you a detailed overview of our performance and the good results that we will be announcing.
The board and management are cognizant of the environment under which our business is operating, including the economic pressures caused by global sociopolitical issues. In Ethiopia, we welcome foreign exchange regime reforms, reforms in our industry, and other reforms for the Ethiopian economy generally. These reforms will be great in the long term, but in the short term, they have an impact on our business and strategy. Peter and Dilip will tell you more and how we are dealing with these issues. Despite these challenges and pressure on customer wallets, we remain optimistic about the future performance of our business. The management in Ethiopia have demonstrated resilience, implementing strategies to cushion our customers and meet their evolving needs. Thank you, Wim and team. We continue to provide reliable and affordable connectivity, increasing our digital product propositions, investing as partners with communities to grow our social impact.
We are deliberate about being impactful. We welcome competition within a fair and level playing field for all operators. We wish to assure you that Safaricom is up to the challenge and will continue to enhance value, quality service, sharpen price, and deliver customized offerings to our customers. Most importantly, we remain a responsible corporate citizen. We employ thousands. We meet our licensing conditions. We exceed our social obligations. We pay our due taxes and are committed to being the leading company serving communities. As we kick off our Silver Jubilee celebrations, the board is excited about meeting its key milestones and is happy to celebrate with you in the coming weeks and months. But most importantly, we are keen to see the management sharpen its focus on customers and strive to exceed their expectations while providing solutions, products, and services that address the evolving societal needs.
Our purpose of transforming lives has been the cornerstone of our business, and it will remain our guiding principle as we go into the future. Through different forums like the United Nations General Assembly, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the Africa Shared Value and ESG Summit, we lead the way in championing for equality and social good. Our 2024 Sustainable Business Report, as well as the Technology for Development Strategy, demonstrates our commitment to not only running a sustainable business but being a clear leader in this area. We continue to develop, co-create, and scale solutions in agriculture, health, economic empowerment, as well as humanitarian aid to support our customers and the communities in the countries we operate in. Our board is very happy with the engagement and relationship with regulators both in Kenya and Ethiopia.
Safaricom will continue to collaborate with different stakeholders and regulators and governments to create opportunities that grow our technology business, support and accelerate innovation in the industry, and Safaricom will continue to be a leader in supporting governments in delivering world-class services that transform lives. Safaricom is at the forefront of this in our country. In October, we announced an international monetary transfer collaboration with Ethiopia, enabling M-PESA customers in Kenya to send money directly to M-PESA wallets in Ethiopia. No small feat. This would not have been possible without the progressive thinking and support of Ethiopian and Kenyan authorities. Thank you. On behalf of the board, I wish to thank Peter and the management team, our customers, staff in both Kenya and Ethiopia, and all our stakeholders for the collaborative effort in enabling our strong performance. I will now request Peter to take you through our results.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome, Peter.
[Foreign Language] We are very happy as a Safaricom community, more than 6,000 employees, celebrating Safaricom turning 24.
Today marks the start of our celebration as we gear towards our Silver Jubilee .
It is a moment to reward our customers for their loyalty, for being patient with us, for always being with us.
The Safaricom Army is all over the country, spreading cheer and joy. I'm just saying thank you to Kenyans, where we paid for matatu fares for people. We gave credits to petrol attendants and some people in the cars. We were with Boda boda riders, giving them reflector jackets.
And behind me is a group of our customers who are the Boda boda riders, who we are delighting today with fuel. And tell them, [Foreign language] Safaricom!
At the core of Safaricom is purpose, and the reason is because we believe that we are here to serve a bigger purpose than just a business. We are here about transforming lives.
[Foreign language]
The customers were ecstatic. You could see the joy. You could see the pride, not only in Safaricom as a company, but also their pride in associating with this business and being a customer of this business.
I'd like to say our congratulations not to Safaricom for turning 24, but to our customers for being with us for 24 years.
We are here because of our customers, and our act of service is that we serve them to transform their lives. For us, act of service is all about giving back to our customers, serving them in their area of need, and ensuring that our services reach out to them and transform their lives every single day.
Over the next 12 months, we are going to continue to celebrate what Safaricom has been to the country.
Happy birthday, Safaricom, at 24.
Happy 24th birthday, Safaricom.
Happy 24th birthday, Safaricom.
Happy birthday, Safaricom, at 24.
Safaricom. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. Happy birthday.
Isn't that great? Yeah, so probably a better clap then. I don't know whether you noticed that there are some people who we should put them on a dancing competition. Fauzia, I'm looking at you. Yeah, but fantastic day, and I'm sure I will be speaking about it over the next day or so, so thank you, Chairman, fellow shareholders, the representatives of the investor community, the board and management of Safaricom Group, members of the media and the online community, invited guests, ladies and gentlemen. Good morning. Good morning, those in the room.
Thank you for joining us this morning as we release our financial year, sorry, our financial results for the half year ended 30th September 2024. Let me start by talking about our birthday celebrations, which you'll have seen on the screen. Two weeks ago, we celebrated 24 years of our operation, 24 years of transforming lives. As part of our birthday celebrations, we rewarded customers, and you saw many of them very happy. I actually remember the lady called Lillian, who I had to buy some Githeri type of waru, for those who might be familiar with what I'm talking about. And she was very, very excited, and I bought it for KES 120 , whole plate with chapati. So we rewarded customers and stakeholders for their partnership and business.
As a result of that celebration, which was on the 23rd of October, we've now kicked off, as the Chairman has said, a year-long journey towards our Silver Jubilee, which is a big milestone that we'll celebrate next year on the 23rd of October 2025. We are excited by what the future holds. Let me now turn to the operating environment, which also the Chairman has touched on. I'll start with Kenya. This period was marked by an improvement in some of the key macro parameters, including declining inflation, GDP growth, and also a stronger currency compared to last year. As a result, there was a general decline in food and also fuel prices. However, economic recovery is fragile, with constrained fiscal space and also a declining disposable income for our customers.
Our customers are facing higher prices of goods, including fuel and costs of loans, whilst our businesses, especially the small businesses, are affected by higher interest rates. Due to constrained disposable income, our customers, therefore, are looking for more value and are looking for every opportunity to stretch their shilling. Let me now speak about our sustainability agenda. We recently launched our 13th Sustainable Business Report. The report is a sign and a commitment to transparency to our operations. We accelerated digital inclusion and pioneered sustainability-linked financing with an additional KES 15 billion of syndicated financing, bringing the total loan to KES 30 billion . This is a pioneer in the industry, and it was syndicated with four banks. So competitors came together to support us to conclude this syndicated financing.
We have partnered with like-minded organizations to develop, to design, and to co-create solutions for maximum social and economic impact. Looking at some of the highlights of the report, in Kenya, our impact on society is now 16 times the profit we generated in the past financial year. In Ethiopia, we are deepening our roots as we connect with Ethiopians, and we'll talk about it a bit more. We are catalyzing a net positive future for our planet as we step up our efforts to achieve 5,000-plus sites on solar, plant 5 million trees, and have over 95% of our sites powered by green energy by 2030. These efforts continue to rally climate action, grow the circular economy, as well as boost conversations and restoration of biodiversity and ecosystems. Let me now talk about our purpose. We continue to transform lives through our foundations, both Safaricom but also M-PESA Foundation.
Commitment to society remains at the core of our operations. In the period that I review, we impacted over 2.6 million. This is just purely during the period that we are talking about, through projects in education, in healthcare, in economic empowerment, in water, and also disaster response across all the 47 counties in Kenya. We aim across Kenya and Ethiopia to connect 50 million lives on 4G Plus, grow financial inclusion to over 70 million, and achieve 50-50 gender representation by 2030. Let me now speak a bit about our brand. We champion Kenya through transformative power of technology. Safaricom is the biggest supporter of Kenyan passion points, including sports, music, and arts. We supported the Team Kenya in both Olympics and Paralympics. We concluded the very successful Chapa Dimba, which is our football program that is aimed at the grassroots.
We supported World Rally Championship and also have started to support basketball, among others. Through Safaricom Hook, which is our youth platform, we connected the youth to opportunities, whether through career preparation or to showcase their talent, creating a world of opportunities for them. Let me now talk about our execution of our strategy. Specific to the period that I review, we have had an excellent performance, as the Chairman has mentioned, across all key indicators. We've recorded growth across key service areas, including voice, SMS, mobile, and fixed, M-PESA, and tech solutions. As a showcase of the impressive performance, we recorded the highest mobile data traffic in our network on July the 14th during the Euro finals. I had put the technical detail. Yeah, let's clap. I had put the technical details of TB and GB and all that.
Then I took it out because I didn't think any of us would understand. But I think the key is connecting Kenyans to passion points that are important to them. Sports is a very big one, and it's great to see that our organization powers and connects everyone, and indeed, especially during those critical moments. This shows our ability to deploy an always-on reliable service to support our customers to experience our services optimally. I'll provide more details on the execution highlights in the following slides. Let me now speak briefly about our commitment to data privacy and also the recognition that we have got at a global level. We are committed to preserving our customer privacy and providing a worry-free experience. The recent International Organization for Standardization, called ISO, award on Privacy Information Management System is a testament to this commitment.
The certification was issued after assessing Safaricom's level of implementation of customer support, billing services, M-PESA, and data center operations. Let me now speak briefly about our partnership with the public sector in digitizing Kenya and also in enabling our population access services. We are using technology to drive digital inclusion, enabling the public to access essential services conveniently. For example, we are digitizing the health sector through the development of an integrated hospital management information ecosystem. This will enable citizens to have an easier access to healthcare. We've deepened financial inclusion by distributing funds for critical services like Inua Jamii, which benefits the vulnerable in our communities, especially the retired. We expect to reach 2 million Kenyans with this program. The e-fertilizer subsidy, which is very popular, has boosted food production, guaranteeing the country's food security, creating jobs, and increasing exports.
Let me now turn to the key business areas. I'll start with our consumer business. As a TechCo, we are using artificial intelligence. I didn't know that I would say this. We are using artificial intelligence and big data to allow us to move away from one-size-fits-all product to differentiated offerings that suit each customer. Frankly, customers don't understand all this big data, AI, and all that. What they understand is what they get as a result of our usage. By embedding segmentation, we intimately understand our customer needs, allowing us to deliver better value via personalized experiences. Through Safaricom Hook, which I've already mentioned, we support our youth in job creation opportunities by enhancing their digital skills, among others. Let me now move on to our financial services business. We continue to deepen M-PESA reach across the country.
Our growing agents and merchants network allows our customers to access services fast and conveniently. Innovation remains critical. We've revamped our wealth proposition and have now received an insurance intermediary license from the Insurance Regulatory Authority. This will help us accelerate our rollout of our insurance solutions. We expect to rollout propositions in both wealth and savings, but also insurance, in the second half of this financial year. Probably a better clap. M-PESA Ratiba, launched at the beginning of October, allows users to set up standing orders directly from their M-PESA wallet, enabling seamless and automatic payments of recurring transactions and bills. And listen to this one. Already, 1 million users have opted in, transacting 336 million since its inception, just in a few weeks. So this is an example of where M-PESA continues to evolve and meet customer needs every day.
With over 84 mini-apps, ranging from transport to wellness and insurance, and on the super app, on the M-PESA Super App, we are giving our customers convenience and building an ecosystem that supports their digital lifestyles. Let me now speak about our enterprise business and also customers. Our enterprise customers have benefited from the innovative tools and opportunities to enhance their business. To build capability, especially for MSMEs, we launched the Grow with Safaricom Business Program. The program offers an opportunity for knowledge sharing and collaboration opportunities to scale their businesses. Most importantly, we are excited about our new upgraded, what we call, converged billing platform that will simplify the way we bill and give our customers much better experience into the future. Let me now speak about our fixed business. This is our home, but also our enterprise broadband business.
To enhance our customer experience and value, we've increased speeds for our business and home customers, enabling them to do much more at no extra cost. Recognizing our customers are now increasingly embracing a digital lifestyle, we've also introduced, for the first time, one Gbps, so Gb per second, platinum plan that will cater to those with elevated connectivity needs. To enhance the experience for homes and businesses outside of areas that are covered by fiber, we are keen to leverage our investment in 5G, which currently stands at more than 1,500 sites spread across all the 47 counties. Let me now turn to from Kenya into our business in Ethiopia. As we've also seen in Kenya, even in Ethiopia, we are encouraged by the improving macroeconomic parameters marked by easing inflation, but also GDP growth in Ethiopia, which is expected to close at 8%.
A significant development in Ethiopia is the reform of the foreign exchange regime, which we expected to happen at some point, and it happens this year. As a business, we are optimistic to be in Ethiopia when critical positive reforms are happening. In the long term, this is good for Ethiopia. Indeed, many investors have asked us how will you be able to repatriate dividends? This is one of the starts of that process of being able to repatriate dividends. So in the long term, we believe it is good for Ethiopia, but we must take into account the financial impact in the short term. We've taken measures to mitigate against the short-term impact, including renegotiating foreign currency-denominated contracts, onboarding local suppliers, which is good actually for Ethiopia, but also reviewing pricing, amongst others.
But despite the short-term challenges, we remain confident on the long-term commercial success of our Ethiopian business, and we are very encouraged by the commercial acceleration led by Wim, who is in the room today. Clap for Wim. I've seen he's chosen a very green color of tie to wear today. Well done, Wim. Let me briefly talk about our purpose and the work that we are doing. Our purpose in Ethiopia is transforming lives for a digital Ethiopia. We reiterate our support to Ethiopia as it accelerates its digital agenda by increasing connectivity, creating a new digital business, and generating new jobs for its citizens. In education, we've provided connectivity and computers in various education institutions, including institutions building capacity, but also creating opportunities for the youth. We've also stood with Ethiopians in response to calamities such as the Gofa Zone landslide, among other community projects.
Let me speak about the key indicators of our commercial acceleration on our Ethiopia business. Our Ethiopia business continues to deliver very strong commercial momentum. I'll pause there as I wait for the clap. We have seen acceleration in customer acquisition, in retention, but also strong mobile data usage. We've grown our customer base by 47.3% and continue to be impressed by the data usage. We've closed at 6.6 Gb per monthly active customer, which I need to say to the Kenya team, compared to Kenya, which is 4.1. So I'm sure there'll be healthy competition between the Ethiopia team and the Kenya team. That's almost 50% more usage in Ethiopia compared to Kenya, and we only have 6 million customers and increasing.
Having looked at Kenya in terms of performance and also Ethiopia, I want now to bring it together and talk about how we have performed, which is, I'm sure, what many are waiting now for H1 2024, the moment of truth. So in summary, in Kenya, we've delivered excellent performance with double-digit growth on both top and bottom line. I'll read that again. We've delivered excellent performance in Kenya with double-digit growth on both top and bottom line. And this builds on a very strong performance that we announced last year. Safaricom service revenue hit KES 177.5 billion for the half, which is a growth of 12.9%. I wondered why they didn't just give me 13. 12.9%, but I have to be exact. I was told by my finance colleagues. So very, very strong top-line performance.
This positively impacted our earnings before interest and taxes, which we call EBIT, but also net income to record a growth of 18% for EBIT and also 14% for net income. On a group basis let me go to the group. On a group basis, our underlying performance, this is excluding the one-off effect of the Birr depreciation as a result of the foreign exchange reforms that have happened, but also what we call hyperinflationary accounting, which Dilip will come and explain what IAS 29 is, the group service revenue grew by 14%, which means actually Ethiopia contributed 10% of that growth. And then the EBIT at group level, and this is going to be very, very attractive in the future, grew by almost 32% on an underlying basis. And the net income has grown by 21.7%.
So it shows the momentum that we'll be able to create once we navigate through this year. On an overall basis, when we incorporate the impact of the depreciation, we see a reduction in net income of 17%, but the group still grows at 13% and 1.8% in terms of EBIT. Let me now invite Dilip to come and take us through the performance in more detail.
Thank you, Peter. After that last slide, I think my part has become very easier. And maybe I don't need all the time that I have budgeted for. So good morning, everyone. I'm Jambo, and to our Ethiopian colleagues and community, [Foreign language] . I'm still practicing this. It gives me great joy this morning to present our half-year financial performance of the period ending 30th September 2024. I hope all of you are doing well, and thank you for joining us this morning. Please note that the detailed results will be available on our website shortly.
What I'm now doing is I'll get into more details into the financial numbers what Peter has spoken about. Let me start with the key highlights. Peter has already mentioned very, very strong performance in Kenya. We have seen overall macroeconomic situations stable, but let's just acknowledge that consumers are still facing challenges, especially with the reduced purchasing power. Of course, that's what is constraining the cost of living. Kenya's overall headline numbers show top-line double-digit growth and double-digit growth across all other financial metrics. An impressive 12.9% growth in service revenue, totaling KES 277.5 billion, and a very robust year-on-year double-digit growth in EBITDA, growing by 13.7%, EBIT at 18%, and net income at 14.1%, which you have just seen in Peter's slide. Our EBITDA for the half-year mark crossed the KES 100 billion mark. We are growing our customers.
30-day active customers now touch 35.3 million, with 6% year-on-year growth. Remember, we are in a market which we consider that it's just mature, but we're still growing our customers. Operating free cash flow, which is a very important parameter. Everything that we do finally comes down to cash flow. We are growing 41.4%, and we have crossed KES 80 billion for the first half of the year. Now, getting a bit more detail on the service revenue. As you can see, all verticals have recorded year-on-year growth. M-PESA grew by 16.6%. Mobile data, very impressive 20.2%. Fixed data, 14.7%. As you are aware, a new MTR regime has come from 1st of March, and that has resulted in a service revenue impact of KES 800 million. If we adjust that, our service revenue for Kenya would have grown by 13.4%.
And if you look at on the right side of the chart, M-PESA now accounts for 43.5% of our service revenue, up from 42.1% last year. We'll provide more detailed explanation of these three specific revenue areas in the upcoming slides. Still on service revenue. Now, what is driving this growth in service revenue? As you can see, our revenue growth profile is quite balanced. It's not lopsided. You have customer growth, and you also have output growth. And you can see that out of 12.9% growth that you're reporting in service revenue, 4.7% is coming from customers' growth and 8.2% coming from output growth. And output growth is very important. And remember, we are in a regime where we are actually optimizing prices. And on the I should say that we are reducing our prices over a long period of time, and yet we are growing in output.
How is that happening? It's simply happening because customers are using more and more of our services, and that's what is driving our output. Still on customers, the other key highlights for this first half is across all verticals in our business, we grew our customers. One-month active M-PESA customers now stands at 33.5 million, growing 4% year over year. You do recognize that we still keep talking about that M-PESA is stagnating. No, it is not. We are still growing customers. Of course, we are growing everything else, but we are also growing customers. Connectivity customers, remember from last financial year, we have promised you we'll now start reporting connectivity customers as a separate category simply because of the evolution of mobile data and the voice usage decline, and the voice customers decline. Practically, what happens?
A customer uses either for voice or for mobile data or for messaging. That's how we started tracking our connectivity customers, so connectivity customers are now at 34.9 million and a growth of 6% year over year, and the last segment, which is fixed customers, which has been growing and also recorded this first half double-digit growth of 18.4%, closing at 329,000. We are encouraged by the healthy customer traction and remain committed to ensure that our customers enjoy the value for money that we provide. M-PESA, and that's what we have started providing you more and more details, and we'll be unpacking the M-PESA performance through a couple of slides. Starting with the revenue, I spoke about 16.6% growth. Now, Peter spoke about it. We touched KES 77.2 billion . So while it contributes to the 43.5% of the total service revenue, it contributed 54% of the incremental revenue.
This was mainly driven by customer growth, output, and of course, output driven by higher usage and in the context of reduced rates. Within M-PESA, consumer payments drove 50.5% of the incremental growth in M-PESA and still continues to be the key contributor of revenue. Revenue from business-related payments increased by 29.1% year on year, and this makes up about 30% of M-PESA revenue, up from 27% similar period last year. Revenue from global payments grew 20.3%. You would have noticed this line item has been growing more or less at this level for the last few years. We have expanded our international payment corridors to over 200 markets. On the credit side, the value of disbursements went up by 9.7% from KES 553.2 billion- KES 606.7 billion, which validates the usefulness of these easily accessible credit options to our customers.
However, revenue remained flat year on year, primarily due to the base effect of the price optimization that we have done in previous years. Now, on usage, this is a very important slide because this is what the usage is what has driven the M-PESA ecosystem, and it continues to expand. The ecosystem continues to expand with the total value and volume of M-PESA transactions growing by 10.7% and 30% year on year, reaching KES 20.9 trillion and 17.1 billion transactions, respectively. Out of this, 39.2% of value, I repeat, 39.2% of value and 56.7% of volume of transactions are non-chargeable. It's very important to understand even the non-chargeable portion of M-PESA, and this speaks to our focus on driving affordability, especially on the low transaction values.
The top left chart shows that chargeable transactions' value grew by 18.1% and chargeable volume grew by 29.3% year on year, which is what actually supports the revenue growth. The top right chart shows the chargeable transactions per one-month customer, a very, very, very important part of the driver of M-PESA health. Chargeable transactions per customer per one month went up from 37.4- 20, it went up to 37.4 from 29.8 transactions last year, which is a growth of 25.6%. And lastly. Thank you. And lastly, M-PESA monetization, which is reflected through the M-PESA take rate, remained more or less stable over the period, whether you look at for the overall transactions or for the chargeable transactions. So we have seen very encouraging momentum in some of the new growth areas in M-PESA.
Peter spoke about some of the newest launches that we had, but I want to focus on a few areas, which is one of our areas is a merchant focus, which is the Lipa Na M-PESA. A slower growth, but still growing. It grew by 5.2% and 3.7%, and it clocked 3.7 billion KES revenue, with volumes growing by 23.4% year on year. The Pochi La Biashara customers, which you know, the informal small merchants, are very encouraging growth, which has actually doubled in this half year to 869,000, and revenue out of that tripling to KES 900 million in this half year. Very good uptake on merchant credit as well, which is also a recent launch. On a very small base, both revenue and transactions' value are almost doubling year on year.
Our wealth product, which is still in pilot phase, already attracted KES 3 billion in assets under management. And we continue to invest and drive innovation of new products as we increase our service to customers. So another growth area, which you have spoken about a lot in the past, is the M-PESA Super Apps. I will start with the consumer super app: 12.1 million downloads, which is a 41.9% increase from last year. 3.6 million active customers, with 1.6 billion out of which are actually revenue-generating. And this facilitates 400 million transactions totaling to KES 1.1 trillion, which is also a growth of 8.6% in volume and a 19.4% increase in value on a year-on-year basis. Through the consumer super app, we have generated KES 6.1 billion in revenue, which is a growth of 15.2% year on year. This contributes 7.2% of overall M-PESA revenue.
We are more encouraged by the performance in the business super app, which has also seen very good progress: 5.7 million downloads and 268,000 active merchants, generating KES 362.8 million in revenue, which is a growth of 8.7% year on year. Through the business app, it has facilitated 39.6 million transactions valued at KES 355.6 billion, which has more than doubled from last year. Together, both the apps, it contributes 8.2% of M-PESA's total revenue. We remain focused on enhancing customer awareness for a smooth experience because this is a new area for us and requires a lot of customer awareness. On M-PESA, there is still a lot of information available that you can refer to our results booklet, which will be available on our website shortly.
Coming back to, again, on the business segments, which is we spoke about connectivity business, revenue from connectivity business, which primarily includes mobile data, voice, and messaging, has grown by 9.8%. 9.8%. This is one area we were growing anything between 3.5%-4%. In the last financial year and now continuing in this year as well, we are close to double-digit growth in connectivity business. So you can imagine connectivity businesses minus the fixed and minus M-PESA, and that's what is also growing at 9.8%, and all-round growth across all revenue lines, very encouraging to see voice growing 4.8%, messaging growing 8%, and mobile data grew, as I mentioned before, 20.2% year on year. Our customer value management initiatives and big data analytics have significantly improved our ability to provide targeted offerings to our customers, as Peter already mentioned. I'll speak about mobile data in the next slide.
I'm still on mobile data. This is, as I said, this has been a stellar performance in the first half. What is really driving this growth? The rising smartphone and our enhanced and increased coverage, both in 4G as well as 5G sites, and customers' demand for digital services. That's what is reflected in the numbers. Mobile data contributes 20% of our service revenue, and it has contributed 29.4% of the incremental service revenue. Remember, I spoke about M-PESA contributing 50% and mobile data contributing 29.4% of the growth in revenue. Growth in M-PESA evenue in mobile data revenue was contributed by growth in chargeable customers by 10.1% and ARPU growth of 13.5%. Average usage per user has now reached 4.12 GB, which is a growth of 9.2% compared to last year.
Now, 10.9 million customers are using more than 1 GB, which is a growth of 18.6% year over year. And remember, this is really the major driver of growth in mobile data, the customers who are using 1 GB per customer per month. As I spoke about smartphone, it is also growing. We have now reached 24.7 million smartphones, and out of which, the one which really matters as we track what we call the 4G+ devices, that has grown 34.5% year over year. This, of course, includes the 5G devices, which has now touched 837,000 users and is growing. We continue to support customers in acquiring 4G-enabled devices through our affordable device financing called Lipa Mdogo Mdogo Propositions. To date, we have sold over 1.6 million devices to facilitate our customers enjoy more features at their convenience. Peter mentioned about our EADAK assembly.
To date, 680,000, and in the first half of this year, we have sold 400,000 smartphones from our device assembly called EDAC. Now, finally, on revenue, which is the fixed, this is the last on the revenue. So fixed has the overall fixed revenue has grown 14.7%, totaling to KES 8.5 billion. Fiber to the Home segment has done exceptionally well. This contributes about 43.9% of our fixed service revenue, which recorded 23% revenue growth and touched KES 3.7 billion. The chart on the right indicates that the fiber to the home customers have increased by 17.8%, totaling to 263,000 compared to 223,000 the similar period last year. This advancement highlights our commitment to enhancing our fixed service offerings and expanding our customer base. I cannot ignore cost. That's a very important part of the financials. So let me start with our operating cost.
Operating costs have grown 15.7% year on year, and majorly driven by the network operating cost and also payroll-related cost. The network operating cost was driven by higher energy consumption due to increasing sites. We have been constantly upgrading our sites, about 850 4G sites we have upgraded in the last financial in the first half of the year, and we have added close to 1,000 5G sites to provide superior customer experience, and as Peter mentioned about, which is also evidenced by our massive growth in mobile data usage. The growth in administration cost was majorly driven by investment in our tech skills as we aim to become Africa's leading purpose-led tech company.
Excluding on direct cost, if you look at our growth, handset cost is what is driving the maximum growth in direct cost, which is understandable as we have almost doubled our handset sales in this half year. Handset cost is more we don't necessarily get any margin, and on the contrary, we provide time-to-time relief to our customers. So if you net that off, direct costs actually have grown by 7.6%, much lower than the top-line growth of 12.9%. The health of the balance sheet is also known how is our debt position. Our debt position actually has declined by 10% to close at KES 80.7 billion, and our debt book is all local, so we managed to pay off all our foreign currency debts. However, due to increasing interest rates, as evidenced from the market, the interest cost actually has grown by 26% year over year.
We also took, as Peter mentioned about, that additional KES 15 billion sustainability-linked loan now totaling KES 30 billion as of end of 30th September 2024. Overall, the health of the business is also known by the net debt-to-EBITDA ratio, which is very strong at 0.28. Everything comes down to cash flow. Whatever we have done, how does the cash flow look like? Very impressive growth in the free cash flow this year. Kenya recorded 73.2% growth in free cash flow, totaling KES 51.3 billion in the first half. This is, of course, driven by growth in EBITDA, which I have already spoken about. Moving to Ethiopia. As of September 2024, Ethiopia marks the two years of commercial production. Peter mentioned about the foreign currency reforms and that, of course, impacts our financials, which I will unpack very quickly.
But I also wanted you to give the flavor of how the actual underlying performance is looking and also how our commercial momentum, which some of which Peter has already spoken about. So Ethiopia contributed 10% of the revenue growth for the group. And as we keep talking about it, it's beginning to become material as we move forward. And another way to look at, also look at without the adjustment of the currency depreciation in ETB terms, which is what they earn their revenue. So you look at a chart, which is also showing the revenue in local ETB terms. The revenue actually tripled to ETB 2.3 billion in the first half of the year. And the performance is majorly driven by mobile data, which contributes 77.8% of the service revenue.
We have an excellent data network that we managed to gain mileage out of it and which is also relied by customers, and they find this more reliable and stable, and this has been our major value proposition in the market. M-PESA is just about one year and is gaining traction, and also some of the use cases are now coming up. One of the important use cases that we have seen traction is use of airtime, buying of airtime through M-PESA. As you are adding more and more use cases to the M-PESA ecosystem in Ethiopia, we will continue to grow in this line as well. In terms of customers and usage, just before that, we now cross 3,000 sites in Ethiopia, covering 46% of population.
If you just do a simple math, that is more than Kenya population, which means that we do have a scale business in terms of the number of sites that we have. Of course, there is still a lot to cover, but just from the sheer size of the population, we are covering a lot by now, and of course, we do have our obligation to cover sites and population in future. I think I will not repeat what Peter has already mentioned. We have seen very good momentum on customers. You have seen, we did have a bit of a slowdown in our customers in the last financial year, but the last six months, we have seen those getting momentum, whether it be 90 day active customers, whether it is 30 day active customers, and of course, the usage of data, which has touched now 6.6 GB.
And our ARPU also continues to grow driven by the mobile data usage. I mean, just to summarize on Ethiopia, all KPIs are showing positive trends. And this is what we have been saying. Commercial momentum is on. And of course, there are other challenges. There are other driven by the foreign exchange reforms, which I'll talk about later. And which is now. Yeah, so I'm sure there is a lot of anticipation of this. What does it mean? I think you have seen Peter giving a flavor of this in how this shows up in the group performance. But I'll try to unpack in a way that you understand two things. One is, what does it mean for the group performance?
And I also remind you, when you look at the group performance, always look at group performance for our share of Ethiopia and not total, because that total doesn't reflect what is important for the group performance to the shareholders of Safaricom PLC. So both Chairman and Peter spoke about the depreciation in the birr driven by the currency reforms. And we are calling it first of all, we anticipated it even before we went for the bid, and it was to come in at some point in time. And the debate was whether there would be staggered depreciation or there would be one-time depreciation. Actually, what was important to see that the currency was floated, which means that it was left to the market to decide what the currency rate would be. And that's why we have seen a steep decline in the currency, what has resulted in 206.3%.
The Birr to dollar moved from 57.69- 118.89. Now, where does the impact come in? It does come in. We have to restate our foreign exchange denominated liabilities into Ethiopian Birr. And that depreciation clearly impacts that. You have to take a hit in your income statement in H1. So just to give you some numbers, as of end of September, we have about $374 million in foreign exchange denominated liability, which is what we have restated. And this is obvious because 85% of our CapEx and 50% of our OpEx was in foreign currency denominated. Peter did mention about measures that we are taking to make sure that we are localizing more and more of that. Wim and his team is doing. Still, there is still work to be done on that. Now, this restatement in the liabilities has resulted in an overall gross.
I'll start with the gross impact of KES 33.8 billion at net income level. But the point, the numbers to remember is what does it mean if you take off the minority interest, which is what is attributable to the equity shareholders of the PLC, the net impact is KES 17.5 billion. And I'll show you in a later slide how does that impact in our overall group earnings. But I also want to mention here, because of the free float, of course, what we don't know of the future, we don't know, but what we have seen a major correction happening in the H1.
What you are mentioning too is that half-year results that you see here actually reflect a substantial impact of the rate correction, which also means that, and that's our belief, the impact in the second half of the year is expected to be much lower and consequently much lower impact in the group income overall when we release our full-year results. But as I said, we don't know future, but this is our belief that what we think what has been done so far, that's how it will impact. Peter mentioned about the measures that we are taking. I don't want to dwell on that much. Again, we have added a separate section in the results booklet to tell you also about some of the very positive things which can also give us a long-term resilience in the market through these foreign exchange reforms. Important part, funding.
So total funding at the end of September 2024 stood at $2 billion, and we added as a consortium $164 million in the first half of the year. And this, of course, includes the equity funding of $1.8 billion, and our share of that was $925 million. And we also managed to leverage our local debt. And as of end of 30th September, we had the local debt in local currency equivalent of $92 million. And we did mention about IFC funding us, and that was $100 million that still remained same. So on CapEx, our group capital expenditure stood at KES 58.7 billion, and Safaricom Ethiopia, out of which contributed 47.5% at KES 27.9 billion shilling. And the Ethiopia CapEx that you have reported has also been impacted, and that includes the KES 10.5 billion Kenya shilling in the CapEx that you have reported.
This, of course, will also form part of the full-year guidance we'll have Peter talk about later. Then on the group net income, I think we spoke about it, a group net income starting with Kenya. Kenya grew by 14.1% and driven by the top-line 12.9% growth. Now, if you take out the minority interest in Ethiopia, and this is very important, so we have normalized minority interest across all on the right side of the chart. First, just excluding minority interest in Ethiopia, the group's net income grew by 21.7%, and you saw that in Peter's slide. The group income excluding minority interest grew by 21.7% year on year. This is also benefiting from the favorable exchange rates in Kenya shilling compared to Ethiopian birr.
Now, on the right side, factoring in the impact of the foreign exchange rate reforms and the hyperinflationary adjustment, which Peter spoke about, the IAS 29, which we are quite familiar with, that I don't want to talk about this again. This is the third year of IAS 29. We are in a hyperinflationary environment, and there is an adjustment for that as well, although on a positive basis. Both adjusted for minority interest, our group net income declined by 17.7%. So I'm just unpacking what Peter spoke about in his group, how 21.7% growth resulting into a 17.7% decline in group net income. And I'm reiterating that the half-year results show a significant effect of the Birr depreciation, and that's what we believe. So the impact on the group performance in the bottom line for the full year or the second half of the year would be much lower.
Now, this is my favorite slide, simply because what happens in the market, there are things that which are not in our control. We anticipated foreign currency reforms at the very beginning. Now, which has happened. The other way to look at the group performance in the way what we call that as I'm sure you are familiar with what we call that as constant currency. So starting with Kenya, I think I don't need to repeat this, very, very strong performance in Kenya. And then I'm showing reported performance. You have seen in Peter showing an EBIT growth of 1.8% and a net income decline of 17.7%. This is still reported basis. And on the right side, the last column actually shows the group performance in a constant currency.
You see that in constant currency, all our financial metrics, even at group level, is a double-digit growth, including net income growth of 10.3%, which actually signifies that the underlying health of the business is solid. We say that it's a short-term pain, which is what we have been going through, but of course, this has a long-term improvement in future. Just to mention again that the materials will be available on our website shortly. Ladies and gentlemen, this brings me to the end of my presentation. Thank you for your time. Back to you, Peter, for additional remarks and FY25 guidance.
I say well done to my CFO. Let's clap for Dilip. Those are big numbers, and also IAS 29, depreciation, all these things, but I think the bottom line is, on an underlying basis, our business is absolutely fantastic. Real, solid momentum in Kenya and very, very strong underlying performance in Ethiopia. One of the things that probably I and Dilip didn't mention, when you look at the network that we have created, and we mentioned this at half-year or at full-year last year, is now about half, equivalent to about half of what we have in Kenya, so in two and a half, three years, we built a network that is about half of what we've built in this country in 24 years, so thank you, Dilip. Ladies and gentlemen, to summarize our performance, probably which I've already summarized, we've had an exceptionally good performance.
Most importantly, we are proud of the value that we've been able to offer to our customers. We pride ourselves in using technology to solve customer and societal challenges. We will continue to grow our core business whilst expanding into new services through our innovative spirit. You'll have seen that in the growth that we've announced, the spectrum of contribution goes across all our lines. So let me now turn into what we shall do in the second half to continue the momentum that you have seen, but also to ensure that we deliver very solid results for the full year. We will continue simplifying our customer journeys. Indeed, this is what we call our main effort, delivering frictionless customer experience by delivering an always-on safe, secure service.
We will intensify our focus on new growth areas across all our business areas, scaling both fixed, enterprise, and going beyond payments in M-PESA, but also continuing to provide tech solutions. We are happy with the progress that we made with our device assembly. This was one of our biggest bets from our strategic perspective, and we'll keep this momentum to ensure that we grow our 4G devices across the country. We still have 60% of people in Kenya and very similar in Ethiopia who still use non-4G devices, the 2G and 3G. So we need to continue to accelerate that. In Ethiopia, we're happy with the momentum gained, and we'll sustain this via aggressive customer acquisition and retention, and also starting to deal with the impact of the foreign exchange reforms.
As part of our transition to TechCo, we will accelerate digital transformation across our processes, and we are not leaving our employees behind. This year, we've had what we are calling 2 plus 1, which is starting to build skills across all our employee base on skills of the future, tech skills of the future, and we are seeing real excitement. Finally, we'll continue the journey on the public sector digitization because this affects or actually impacts a broad section of the population. So it goes back to us transforming lives. But also, it's all our customers. You'll have seen that our M-PESA customers have grown to 33 million, 33.5 million. And also, our GSM customers are now past 35 million, which means any work we do in agriculture, in financial inclusion, and healthcare affects a broad base of our customers.
We'll continue the journey on public sector digitization as partner of choice, taking the lead in ensuring deployment of technology solutions to enable our society and our customers access critical public sector services and ensure that they enjoy the benefits of what technology can bring. Just briefly talking about our 2030 vision, which you'll have heard from both myself but also the chairman, we are on a journey to being Africa's leading purpose-led technology company. By 2030, we want to be known for two things. One is delivering value-adding, personalized service. That's why we'll use technology enabled by big data and AI, including GenAI, that simplify and improve the daily lives of our customers and our society every day.
The second is we want to be the digitization and also financial services partner of choice for enterprise, both small business but also large, but also public sector through innovative and secure technology solutions. And for us to achieve this, we'll need to make some key shifts in our business, including protecting and growing our core business. You'll have seen that actually we've started to accelerate growth of our core business, especially in our connectivity business in Kenya, but also our mobile payments business, which is largely mature, although keeps improving. We will then accelerate the transition to a technology company by scaling digital services across all sectors.
In Ethiopia, we'll boost and evolve that business, paving way to a profitable and also sustainable business that ensures that we continue to serve to the benefits, to serve the country, but also benefit by innovating and also funding that business into the future together with our partners. Specifically on Ethiopia, if we look at the medium term for our strategy, our outlook for Ethiopia continues to be reaffirmed by the growth in the customers that we have seen, the underlying growth in customers, but also in usage. We will grow Ethiopia in a sustainable way, accelerating financial and digital services to build a digital-first enterprise. We are lucky in Ethiopia because we are putting the latest technology from the very start. All our sites are 4G+, 4G enabled, and 5G ready.
We've rolled out an award-winning network, which will now be just, as I have said, the half of the size of the Kenya network. So in terms of outlook, when we look at the medium term, which is about three years, for Kenya, we expect to maintain the service revenue momentum seen in H2 and also last year into the medium term. M-PESA will continue to grow double-digit. Mobile connectivity, and I need to be careful when I say M-PESA will continue all these things because I'll be held to account by the board. M-PESA will continue to grow double-digit, and I'm confident about that. Mobile connectivity revenues, and you'll have seen from Dilip's presentation, will now, and we are confirming, will now grow in high singles, which is fantastic, especially given the maturity of our voice business.
On earnings before interest tax, depreciation, and amortization, which is the EBITDA, that should remain stable, including stable CapEx intensity, which is CapEx as a % of sales. You'll have seen we are investing close to KES 60 billion just for the half across the two countries. For Ethiopia, on EBITDA break-even, we've moved it forward. We've adjusted it one year to year five. We used to say that we'll have break-even in year four. So we moved it to financial year 2027 from our earlier estimate of financial year 2026 due to the effect of the foreign exchange reforms that we've spoken about because it will need us time to ensure that we adapt and adjust our business to get there. But our focus is to grow our customer acquisition.
We should get to about 4,000, just over 4,000 sites in the medium term, and mark this, 15-20 million customers in the next three years, which is about half of where Kenya is as we scale the business for the next few years. The advantage of having the second largest population in Africa. Let me now go to one of the most important, which is what we call our guidance. From a financial perspective, we have reviewed our financial year 2025 guidance in line with our performance momentum. Probably the reason I'm having challenges is because of the good performance. Our financial year 2025 guidance in line and taking into account our performance momentum in half one and the impact of foreign exchange reforms in Ethiopia. For Kenya, let me start with Kenya.
We are going to be upgrading our guidance on earnings before interest and taxes by KES 6 billion. The person who was supposed to bring me water has forgotten. This will deliver earnings before interest and taxes by the end of the financial year of a range between KES 155-158 billion in Kenya. Our CapEx spend will remain unchanged. For Ethiopia, we've revised our EBIT loss to a range of 61 to 58, adjusting for the Birr depreciation impacting, assuming a September closing rate of about 118, which is what we have used for the half year. And this is for the investor community, which we want to indicate. Of course, we've used a rate as at the end of H1, which is 118.
But due to the uncertainty of what rate we will have at the end of the year, we are guiding that any 10 percentage points change in terms of currency depreciation would result to about KES 8 billion equivalent in terms of balance sheet impact and therefore the P&L impact. So Ethiopia CapEx, though, will also incorporate the foreign exchange impact. And you can see that we are increasing the Ethiopia CapEx by about KES 6 billion-KES 7 billion. And so the Ethiopia CapEx will be revised to 28-31. So on a consolidated basis, EBIT guidance is a range of 94-100 billion KES. CapEx guidance will be between KES 80 and KES 86 billion . So we continue to put a lot of investment in the two countries. We have also been guiding on customer numbers for Ethiopia.
So we guided customer numbers of seven-10 million by the end of the year. We already are 6, so we are keeping that guidance, but we believe that we'll be on the higher end of that range. On M-PESA, we are guiding about a million customers by the end of March 2025 because the business is still at an early stage, but I'm sure from next year, we should see acceleration. Now, moving away from the guidance and going to conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, I want to start by thanking our valued customers for allowing us to serve them over the past 24 years. Let's clap. And our commitment is we are committed to serving you and continuing our efforts to address societal challenges through the transformative power of technology and innovation.
To our board of directors led by our chairman and some of the board members who are in the room, but also those who are calling online, I can see some of them, Karan Engineer. Thank you for your unwavering support and guidance. Don't clap for the board. I would not get that CapEx if I didn't have the board. To my colleagues in Kenya, this is our employees, and also Ethiopia. Your hard work and dedication has driven our impressive results. Thank you for what you bring every day. To all our partners, dealers, agents, supply chain community, regulators, government partners across the two countries, we appreciate your support and your collaboration, which has enabled us to achieve the excellent results that we have today, but also continue to serve our customers for the past 24 years.
I look forward to your continued support as we enter the second half of the year. Once again, thank you very much. Let me try. [Foreign language] . Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Peter. Thank you very, very much, Chairman. Thank you very much, Dilip. Come on, let's give them another round of applause. Ladies and gentlemen, now that brings us to the end of our half-year results announcement, and we will quickly segue into questions and answers, and I would like us to really engage the leadership team at this particular juncture, so for our online audience, I would like to once again implore upon you to post your questions on the Menti platform. That code is displayed on your screen, one two nine seven seven six six five. I am looking at my Menti platform. Very few questions. I know the results are wonderful, great, fantastic, excellent.
But I'm sure there are questions that you'd love to ask this leadership team. So as I bring them on board, please post those questions online, and I'll read them out on your behalf, and you get to walk away with lots and lots of more information about our performance. Allow me now to call upon our leaders once again back on stage, and I'll start with our Chairman. No, no, no. Our CEO, Dr. Peter, if you could please come. Our CFO, Dilip Pal. And then I'll also call upon our CEO, Ethiopia, Wim Vanhelleputte. Please come on board. I'm sure most of you heard he's in the audience, so here you get also a chance to interact with him on matters Ethiopia. I want to start with questions from the room.
So if you could please indicate by a show of hand, then the mic will come to you. Then we'll post the questions. And please just, you can select the leader that you'd want to answer the question for you. Feel free to do so in the room. Hello, hello. Any questions in the room? Yes, I see a hand there. Yes, go ahead.
Yes, good morning. My name is Kepha Muiruri, the Nation Media Group. I think I have a question for each, just a single for each. So let's start with Dilip. Price optimization. You've been able to bring more customers on board, grow the average revenue per user without necessarily raising the prices.
I'm curious to know going forward, as you predict the connectivity revenues to grow in the high single digit, how much more can you push in terms of trying to keep prices in check as you can see the revenue still being delivered as much as the base price might be lower? Then to Mr. Peter Ndegwa, on the regulatory side of view, two things to mention here. The proposed tax laws amendment bill is proposing to raise excise duty on telephone and data services back up to 20% as proposed in the rejected bill. I don't know what impact you might expect there. But more so around regulation, again, on matters KRA. There's a plan, of course, to try and use some of your tools, perhaps, if I may call them so, the Pochi and the tills and the Paybills as ETR receipts.
I don't know whether you expect any, you anticipate any impact. I'm seeing the till side is actually, the Pochi, the Biashara is actually growing quite fast. I don't know whether you expect any bumps on the road if people are perhaps to go back to P2P perhaps or even go out of their mobile money side of things in a bid to stay off the taxman path. Then on Ethiopia, I think my question here is with regards to the customer side. We've seen quite the momentum on M-PESA in terms of the sign-ups vis-à-vis they're even beating what you might have on the connectivity side. Perhaps going forward, how can you leverage the momentum on the M-PESA side to also grow the connectivity business?
What are perhaps, how can you bridge that gap so that the same momentum I can see on the sign-ups on M-PESA Ethiopia can be the same across on the other side of the connectivity business? Thank you.
Thank you very much, Kepha. I'll request our leaders to respond in the same order.
I start? Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Kepha. So when I was presenting, if you noticed there is something that we said we are preparing ourselves for something for future, and which is what future customers don't look at, whether they're using voice, they're using data, or they're using messaging, right? That's why we're calling that as a connectivity customers. Increasingly, you'll probably see us talking about moving into a more integrated bundling.
It's a choice you have whether you decide whether how much voice you want to use, how much data you want to use, how much you want to use for messaging, right? We have seen that even before. I mean, there are. I said, voice is a mature market, but we have seen that when you reduce prices, customers use more. And that's visible in numbers. You have seen the numbers. Usage is growing. Mobile data is very obvious. That's the. We still have a huge runway to grow in terms of adding more customers. The 4G, we covered everything. All our sites, mostly all our sites are 4G-enabled. 5G, we have just started. In a very short period of time, I looked at the numbers. Half year, I think we are about 3-4% of the usage is already happening in 5G.
So that's not small. So as you can see, I think ultimately what will determine is customer have a wallet, they know how much they're going to pay, and they will decide how they're going to do it. So individually, in three to five years from now, you would not really like to see what's happening in the voice rate or what's happening in the data rate, and more and more on integrated bundling. The objective is who is using, I don't know, 2 GB a month, and you see that they actually have potential to use 2.5 GB or 3 GB. So you find you are offering them something so that they can upgrade. I think that has worked very well for us, and we believe that's what is going to keep us.
It's not necessarily the rate optimization. The way you have seen it is not how you will see it in future. You will see more and more integrated bundling, driving usage, driving ARPU, and driving customers, and of course, the revenue.
Thank you, Kepha. I think fantastic questions. You always do. You never disappoint. Just to add to what Dilip has said in terms of value, delivering value to our customers is a very important component of our commitment. Because when we research our customers and we ask them what do you want, of course, give me reliable, always on, yeah, frictionless. Second, give me something that has value, yeah, and ensure it's a brand for me, yeah? That's why value is a very critical enabler. And you'll be surprised.
One of the consequences of ensuring that you go into integrated propositions is we reduce what we call out-of-bundle. So because when a customer buys a proposition that's not in a bundle, they probably pay the headline rate compared to paying a rate that reflects the lifestyle, if it's a student or whatever it is. So we have targets, 4G has targets, of the penetration of our integrated propositions into the future so that we reduce the out-of-bundle because customers complain if they don't know what they are using. But when you are in a bundle, I have this bundle for 24 hours, and I can use probably as much as I want on data or voice and so on. That's why integrated is very important. And it's also informed by segmentation. I know when we spoke, I only spoke about the youth. It was an example.
We have four segments. We have what we call Achievers, Aspirers, Strivers, Youth. These are internal language we use, but it is based on research that we have done on customers and their needs. So it's very important. And you'll have seen on the M-PESA side, if we leave the GSM side, almost 60% of the volumes that we sell is free. But that person might have five transactions free, but might add one transaction chargeable, if you get what I mean. So there's this kind of network effect. So we will continue to optimize. And our price in general, even at headline level, is still quite comparable with the region. So I think there's still a lot of headroom. But the final one, which is the most important, is the devices. The headroom, the runway for usage is very high. You saw Ethiopians are using 50% more than Kenya.
So there's still a lot of runway in terms of enabling use. So what are the barriers to use? One of them is affordability. One of them is, do you have the network? And the other one, do you have propositions that work for me? So I hope it also probably addresses some of the other questions that might come. Then you asked the question on tax. Of course, we are engaging just to see what proposals are on the table. In the same way we engaged last year, we always do, both as Safaricom, as part of the industry, as part of the private sector. So we'll continue to engage to ensure that the treasury balanes the tax proposals versus the impact it has on customers.
I can't tell where it will end up, but I think all I can say is we are engaging and we continue to engage so that we avoid a situation where you have increases that affect customers' ability to use. And on the issue about tills and Paybills and Pochi, we are the largest taxpayer, so we are quite conscious about the need to pay tax. But also for our customer base, we are also conscious that this country has made significant progress on digitization, yeah? So therefore, we need to make sure even as we expand, as the authorities try to expand the tax base, we do not kind of roll back some of the benefits that we have seen on digitization. So it's a balance.
I won't comment on the headlines, but all I can say is that we continue to engage the right authorities and the right regulator to make sure that they incorporate all the needs of our customers, especially the small businesses.
Okay. Concerning the question on M-PESA in Ethiopia, we are on a journey. We are on a startup, so there's a journey that we are following. You first have the acquisition. Acquisition becomes users. Users, you try to stimulate their usage. And then, of course, you put a rate so that you can monetize. So acquisition, users, usage rate. So our figures show that today we have 6 million active, 90-day active users. 5.5 million are doing voice, 4.5 million are doing data. There's one million that are doing M-PESA for now.
So yes, we have acquired, signed up 7-8 million on the M-PESA side, but when it comes to active users, we are at 1 million. What are they using? They're mainly going into, as Peter has explained, buying airtime products, data bundles through the M-PESA. So we are contributing about 20% of the sales bundle and airtime sales go through the M-PESA channel initiated by self-top-up, self-purchase. So it is actually more the voice and the data customers that we have, the 6 million that we have active on the telco side that will pull up the 1 million M-PESA users over the next few months. So we have a big base. 95% of the 6 million are actually M-PESA enabled, M-PESA registered. Only 1 million are today actively using the M-PESA service.
So the opportunity here is actually to convert and to encourage the voice and the data users to also start using the M-PESA services because they're fully enabled. The products and services are there. The lending products, the overdraft products, insurance, all of those things are being put in place. So it is actually the other way around. It is the telco users, the voice and the data telco users that will pull up the M-PESA usage over time.
Thank you. Thank you very much for that. I want to come again into the room. Yes, yes, Matthew.
Thank you. So Matthew Hodgkinson from the Confluence Impact Fund. Congratulations on strong results, and thank you for the clear presentation of them. My question is really for Wim and probably diving in a little bit more into that usage.
In the results, you had about 8 million M-PESA users reported and about 6 million connectivity users. Can you help explain how that works, how we connect those two? And then this is maybe a little bit of an unfair question because it's looking to the future. That ratio of customers between the different services is quite different in Ethiopia than we see in Kenya. And obviously, the services in Ethiopia are much less mature. How do you see that evolving as you achieve sort of maturity over the next three to five years? Thank you.
Okay, so we've just explained the 6 million active customers, 1 million of them are active on M-PESA. Yes, we have signed up 8 million because that's the historical figure of accumulating, enabling customers to be able to use the M-PESA service. Doesn't mean that they are using it.
So we have 6 million of an active base. 1 million of them are actively using M-PESA. So we have about, let's say, 15% penetration. But 95% of the 6 million are M-PESA enabled. They're part of the 8.6. So in terms of the maturity, I suppose this is just about mature about M-PESA or also about all services. So you've seen our key value proposition is data. We have now 46% 4G population coverage. Our competitor didn't issue the prospectus, okay, as part of their private placement. So it is public knowledge what I'm going to say. They have announced 33% 4G population coverage. So you can see that after two years in the market, we actually have a 10 percentage point gap, bigger population coverage than our competitor.
So that means that the number one key value proposition, the number one reason why customers are joining us is for the 4G data network. So you also see in the figures, of course, 70%-75% of the revenue contribution comes from mobile data because that is the number one reason why joining Safaricom. So over time, what we see now is that the voice business is also picking up because you start creating some kind of critical mass. The beauty about data is that you consume it on your own. Okay? You don't need anybody else. When you do a voice call, you need another person to call. Okay? So you need to be two. So voice business can only kick in when you start getting critical mass.
So now that we get into six million, the guidance between 7-10 million, we'll start building up a critical mass, which now makes voice on Safaricom network relevant. If you only have one million customers and they're using data and you have a population of 125 million, the one million people will say, "Who am I going to call?" Okay? Because 99% of the population is on the other network, which of course has higher rate usually than on the online calls. So you'll start seeing a shift as contribution. The mobile data will start stabilizing, probably going down, and it will be replaced by more contribution from the voice business. And over time, we're very confident that also M-PESA is also starting to contribute to the revenue bucket. Not yet in the range of 43%. I can only dream of that.
But M-PESA revenue is going to start contributing. So you're going to start seeing a different mix over time. Voice is going to start growing. M-PESA is also going to start growing. But for the next two, three years, for sure, mobile data will remain our flagship and our number one value proposition reason for customers to join and to consume on Safaricom.
Just to, Caroline, just to add, Matthew, I think you also want to understand how these ratios will work in future, right? The sign-up, okay, the reason why we introduced sign-up for M-PESA is because you want to see how many customers are registering. Doesn't mean that they use. So that's what Wim is clarifying. Sign-up doesn't mean anything. But sign-up or the gross adds that we report for GSM business is actually reported only when they use it for revenue generating. You get that difference.
So that's how the ratio will work. It will never be the same, but it will be coming closer to that only when you have the traction or the scale. So at this stage, we are very conscious about sign-up in GSM meaning that they are actually doing some revenue-generating activities. A sign-up in M-PESA means that they're just signing up because we're enabling this as part of when they are buying a SIM. They may decide to use or they may not use, but that's what that eight to one million ratio is coming.
Thank you. Thank you, Wim and Dilip, for that addition. So in the interest of time, allow me to go online. And thank you very much, our online viewers, for the questions that you've posted. And starting with congratulatory messages to our leadership and indeed Safaricom team. So thank you for that.
This question now requests that Dilip, you please respond. I think we created an expectation. So are there any interim dividends? Have you announced a dividend yet for half one? And would that exclude FX impact from Ethiopia? And the second part of that question, I'll request you wait for the material. It's actually loaded on your website. I'm sure you'll be able to see the total revenues. Let's talk dividend. Dilip. Yeah.
How can a financial results call is without a dividend question? So on dividend, we do have a process and we do have a rhythm of what we have introduced. We call interim dividend and a final dividend. And we are not deviating from that. I think if you look back historically, we talk about interim dividend around February. I am not anticipating, of course, that some of the board members are here.
And of course, dividend is always subject to board approval. But I am not anticipating any change on that rhythm of paying interim dividend. Now, as regards to question on what is included and what is not included, let me clarify. I should have done that. First, reminding you the impact of IAS 29, which is the hyperinflationary accounting, is not included. Yeah? We remove it, whether it is a gain or there is a loss. So that's, I'm reconfirming because you have been used to seeing hyperinflationary numbers for some time now. But the impact of depreciation of Birr is included because it's not technical anymore. You are restating your liabilities and therefore you take a one-time hit. Yeah?
So the rate, which I spoke about, 119, and based on which whatever you have seen to the extent minority interest adjusted, that will definitely be adjusted for calculation of eligible profit for dividend. So I'm just confirming that it will include that as well. Yeah? And I also spoke about the way to look at is you have seen guidance from Peter. I think you have a way of looking at that. So I don't predict anything. But other way to look at is assuming the currency does not change beyond what you have seen in September. Yeah? It means that there is no further impact on our financials unless we take new liabilities. Yeah? So everything we had as of September end, we have restated in our financials.
The only change which can happen is if there are a few new liabilities coming in or the rate is changing. I just want to clarify that as well. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Dilip. This next question, I'll request our CEO, Peter, to please respond. Customers are worried about Safaricom sharing their data with government and soon with KRA. What would you tell these worried customers, Peter?
Sounds like one of those questions which are written, anonymous, and that's why I suppose Caroline is directing it to the CEO, so just before I answer the question, which is actually a very important question, and that's one of the reasons why we included a very specific reference to our focus on privacy, so I just wanted to, so Matthew, and we have had this conversation with you and other investors.
We also need to understand that Ethiopia, in terms of the way M-PESA will evolve, may be quite different from the way Kenya has evolved. And also, last two weeks ago, when I was interviewed with Jeff Koinange on JKL, he asked me about the past and all that. And I kind of reminded him that M-PESA was not an overnight success in Kenya. So it took time. You focus on use cases. You try and see how those use cases support customers. You think about pricing, and eventually you get to a good place. And so we need also to be patient to make sure that whatever we do allows us time to make sure that we are hitting the right use case. Now, I think the other one was to make fun of my CFO here. He said he's not guiding, but he told you something. Yeah? Dilip.
Anyway, but in a way, foreign exchange shocks on the financials, remember, don't have a big cash impact. They usually have a, I mean, a year zero type. So we are conscious that there will be a bit of that impact. So even as people digest the results, they need to realize on an ongoing basis, and especially as we deal with some of the measures that will allow us to get back to good momentum on a U.S. dollar basis, the actual year zero mix doesn't make a very big difference. So I think that's the other thing I wanted to say. On privacy, I think this is a very, very critical point. I think there has been many, many some of it has been misreported in my view, and we have made it very clear to those who have misreported some of that.
But we have always 36 million customers on the consumer side. We have 33 million customers on the M-PESA side. If we were sharing data every day, we would have a crisis and chaos in our business. We build this business to ensure always on, secure, always on, safe, secure, always on. It's not a coincidence that M-PESA works the way it works every day, 365 days a year. It requires controls. It requires diligence. The 6,000 people who work in our business, actually, there's a code of conduct. There's a way that they are supposed to operate, the way they are supposed to handle information. There's some information that cannot be shared across function. So there's a lot of controls that we go through. Then you layer on the national laws, which is the Data Protection Act and all the other elements.
But our commitment is we have been successful for 24 years because our customers have trusted us. The basis of that trust is that we don't let them down. We always make sure that our services are on. Regardless of what happens, that is one of the biggest areas. Second, as we've said, they are affordable. But then it's also secure, safe, that their data is safe with us. Their money is safe with us. We transact $750 million every day. That money needs to be kept safe. We keep it safe. So the safety and security of information and data for customers is essential. One of the reasons why we went through this has nothing to do with the question you're asking because you don't go through certification in one day.
But we've gotten banking grade, the highest certification that very few MNOs have, which is ISO 27701, which is Privacy Information Management. It looks at the broad spectrum of how you manage privacy. Yeah? Taking into account laws, taking into account controls, taking into account governance and other. Last year, we had what is called the PCI DSS, which is the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. So that's a security side. So you have privacy and security so that we can be sure that as we launch all these products we are talking about, Ratiba, which is a standing order and all these things, we know the base is strong. And then we overlay our commitment to customers. So I only wish to tell everyone in Kenya, in particular, given all the challenges that we've seen, that we guarantee we do not share information.
We follow the law to the letter. We have controls that allow our business to run. And we continue to do that in the next 25 years as we've done in the past 24.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Peter. And on that high note, and indeed assurance given by our very own CEO, that brings us to the end of the time that we have with you this morning. The conversations don't end here. There are various platforms of engagement with these results together with our leaders. So definitely, you will get a chance to keep fielding more questions. And at the same time, even for those that had written online, I saw quite a good number of questions also come through that we are not able to respond at this point in time. But feel free to write to us through our usual address, investorrelations@safaricom.co.ke.
Others, once again, thank you. And I just want to also make note. I am getting informed here that our H1 presentation and indeed the other results materials have already been loaded on our website. So feel free to download and engage, internalize, and get to really appreciate the performance that we have delivered in this first half. Once again, we appreciate you for joining us this morning. And as my Ethiopian colleagues would say, [Foreign language], which basically means thank you. And once again, we thank you. [Foreign language] Others, stay connected and keep well. Thank you very much.