This is the performance report for the first half of the new “Next Horizon: Digital & Beyond 2028 Strategy” year, covering the period from July 2025 to December 2025.
Our company is diligently implementing the “Next Horizon: Digital & Beyond 2028 Strategy,” aimed at accelerating Ethiopia’s digital transformation to ensure digital inclusion, job creation, and community benefits and foster the country’s comprehensive economic growth and the company’s role in the continental digital economy.
By rapidly adapting to evolving technologies, the company community is working with high motivation and commitment to transform Ethio telecom into a globally competitive, regionally unique, and digitally empowered entity so as to unlock and share the fruits of the digital economy.
The strategy is aligned with the national “Digital Ethiopia 2030” vision, strengthening the company’s role in accelerating comprehensive economic growth, streamlining digital government services, and creating new opportunities within the regional and global digital economies. It is also working diligently to improve the daily lives of citizens, support the business community and government institutions, and solidify the foundation of a vibrant digital ecosystem through continuous investment in telecom infrastructure, digital platforms, and financial technology.
Moreover, we are committed to supporting the national development agendas by expanding services into various digital platforms, ecosystems, and enterprise solutions. Beyond national borders, we are working to accelerate the “Digital Africa” journey and become a regional role model by creating new opportunities in the global digital economy, providing cross-border services, and enhancing continental collaboration.
Expansion of Telecom and Digital Infrastructure
To create a digital environment that accelerates the building of the national digital economy, our company has designed and implemented modern projects to modernize the telecom sector, expand services, improve quality, and enhance community benefits. Key projects include 4G and 5G network capacity and coverage expansion based on data traffic growth, backhaul and transport network capacity upgrades, fixed broadband capacity expansion, expansion of digital infrastructure, Cloud services, and AI-assisted operational systems and operational support systems (OSS), corporate solutions, security solutions, and various civil construction projects.
Mobile Network Expansion Initiatives
In the past six months, our company has built and operationalized 278 new mobile stations through large-scale project work, of which approximately 130 (or 47%) are rural mobile stations benefiting rural areas. This brought the total number of stations to 10,288, achieving 98.5% of the plan, while increasing network capacity by 3.21 million and raising the total customer carrying capacity to 108 million, meeting an achievement of 101%.
Through the network expansion works carried out during the half-fisical year, 133 new towns have become beneficiaries of 4G LTE service, increasing the total number of 4G-enabled towns to 1,069. This has allowed the achievement of 74% 4G population coverage and 27.6% geographical coverage.
Specifically, by increasing the number of rural sites, communities in areas previously without service access have been integrated into the digital economy. This has not only created favorable conditions for all citizens to transition beyond voice services to digital finance, government services, and other technological options but has also enabled improvements in internet speed and service quality.
Empowering Rural Communities
Ethio telecom is diligently working to expand rural mobile services in rural kebeles and villages where telecom services were previously unserved and bring rural residents into the digital world. This enables rural residents to join the digital world and ensure inclusions. In this first half budget year, 130 rural mobile sites were built across 9 regions and in 102 weredas, addressing 332 kebeles/villages. This expansion covered 761, 027 people. On average, these areas were 23.76 KM distant from the nearest towns and 18.77 KM distant from the nearest mobile site.
Backbone Network: Internet Gateway Infrastructure Expansion
In the past six months, 377.7 km of new fiber deployment was carried out regarding backbone network expansion. This has brought the total backbone fiber length, including OPGW, to 23,026.7 km. This expansion work plays a significant role in increasing the network’s redundancy and resilience. To accommodate the high traffic flow resulting from increased customer data usage, the International Internet Gateway (IGW) capacity was increased by 500 Gbps through caching during the half-year, bringing total capacity to 3 Tbps. This vast capacity was built in a way that reduces the company’s foreign currency expenditure, with more than half of the total capacity (1,762 Gbps) achieved by creating local caching capacity to keep data traffic within the country.
Furthermore, modernization of IP Core and IGW routers was completed at 13 data centers and core sites, raising single-line carrying capacity to 800G and slot capacity to 3.2T. Consequently, the total IP Core capacity has reached 97 Tbps.
Ensuring Power Supply
To ensure Quality of Service (QoS), 152 generators and 101 new solar-powered sites were installed, and capacity upgrade work was performed on 264 solar sites. This has brought the company’s total solar power generation capacity to 30MW peak. Moreover, to enhance service quality, 61 km of backbone fiber maintenance and renovation was conducted, enabling customers to have reliable and fast network experience.
Electric Vehicle (EV) Charging Stations
In the first six months of the budget year, 3 super-fast electric vehicle charging stations were constructed, with the capacity to serve a total of 40 vehicles at once.
This has raised the number of EV charging stations built by our company so far to 5, creating a total capacity to charge 72 vehicles simultaneously using ultra-fast and super-fast technology. Beyond supporting the government’s green economy policy and direction, this initiative significantly contributes to accelerating electric vehicle adoption and transition in our country.
Activities Carried Out to Enhance Fixed Network Capacity and Quality
To meet the high demand for fixed broadband internet services, expand fiber accessibility, and enhance network quality and capacity, an additional 254.3 thousand Optical Distribution Network (ODN) capacity was built during the six months, bringing our total ODN capacity to 1.21 million and achieving 124% of the plan. Based on agreements with large enterprises, city administrations, and government institutions, while 306 km of CCTV fiber deployment was planned, a total of 519 km was deployed through special projects.
Significant progress was shown in fiber broadband network infrastructure construction; under the new fiber broadband network coverage (Greenfield) project, 32,948 (105%) customer premises were connected against a plan of 31,474. This success was achieved through the rapid supply of necessary Optical Distribution Network (ODN) materials via vendor financing options. Furthermore, under the Copper Switch-Off project aimed at converting existing copper customers to fiber, ODN network capacity for 221.3 thousand customers was built during the six months (97% achievement). This project has significantly contributed to solving service quality issues for existing customers and quickly restoring services in areas where copper networks were damaged by development activities. Consequently, 32,600 customers were migrated from copper to fiber during the six months, bringing the total number of migrated customers to 68,661.
Alongside this, 173 new OLT devices were installed, raising the total number of OLTs to 833. Through metro fiber expansion to increase fiber network coverage in cities, 253 km was deployed during the first half-year, bringing total metro fiber length to 14,593 km. Out of this, 234 km was used for Fiber to the Tower (FTTT) deployment, enhancing our mobile backhaul network capacity and making it ready for 5G and future expansion works.
Developing and Improving Digital Infrastructure
By upgrading and improving Information Technology systems, the company has achieved continuous business growth and high technological excellence while ensuring the best customer experience through modern service quality. Consequently, technology products of high value for community lifestyle and enterprise efficiency are being made widely accessible. Specifically, new technologies and digital solutions that modernize operations and provide fast, convenient service to customers are being implemented. Key among these are: OSS Cloud implementation, NGBSS SNS upgrade raising customer capacity to 110 million, TeleCloud and Private Cloud, Disaster Recovery (DR) expansion, construction of a new E-Commerce platform, DNS System Upgrade Solution, Webhosting Upgrade and Migration, and Authentication, Authorization & Accounting (AAA).
Data Center and Cloud Services
In line with realizing the Digital Ethiopia vision and based on the rapidly growing demand for data center and cloud services, our data center capacity has reached 5 MW IT Load, 624 IT Racks, and 28,848 U.
Cloud infrastructure expansion works, which significantly contribute to accelerating our country’s digital transformation and enabling institutions to digitalize their operations, were implemented; through this, data center capacity of 31,616 vCPU in elastic compute, 4.5 PB in storage, and 3 PB in enterprise storage was built.
Activities Performed to Enhance Service Quality
Regarding mobile service quality enhancement, while the plan was to reach a Network Availability Rate (NAR) of 95.7%, the actual achievement was 93.7% with an average performance of 97.9%.
Besides, during the six months, while the plan was to achieve 79.5% for installing new fixed broadband lines within 5 days, the performance was 81.7%, with an average achievement of 102.8%. Furthermore, while the plan was to achieve 62.5% for fixed broadband data fault repair within 3 days, the achievement was 51.3%, with an achievement rate of 82%.
While the plan was to reach a Call Success Rate (CSSR) of 98%, the actual performance was 95.6%, with an average achievement of 97.6%. 4G MBB speed reached 6.9 Mbps against a target of 8.2 Mbps. Average broadband service packet loss was 0.32%, showing better performance than the planned 0.35%.
Network Traffic Performance
During the past six months, 92.38 billion minutes of mobile voice calls and 440.18 million minutes of inbound international voice calls were conducted. Furthermore, 26.6 billion short text messages (SMS) and 942.52 billion megabytes of mobile data traffic were recorded. Compared to the same period last year: mobile voice calls increased by 10.6%, inbound international calls by 12.8%, short messages by 44%, and mobile data by 46.8%.
Growth was recorded across all traffic types, with data traffic performance showing the highest increase. Key reasons for this elevated performance include the increase in the number of data-using customers and data usage behavior, expansion of network infrastructure (especially 4G), the launch of new products and services, continuous network optimization, the provision of affordable package options considering customers’ purchasing power, and increased collaboration with partners.
Product and Service Enhancement
During the first half-year, 204 products and services were brought to market, consisting of 81 new, 74 modified, and 49 promotional items. In these six months, 83 products and services for individual customers, 30 business connectivity solutions, 27 digital and lifestyle services and solutions, 11 cloud and enterprise solutions, 13 products and services aimed at increasing international business revenue and leveraging partnerships, and 40 telebirr products and services were launched.
Among the cloud and digital solutions provided are tailored fleet management solutions for key sectors such as education, transport, and finance. Moreover, various new 231.9 thousand telecom and digital service utility devices were brought to market, and 389.9 thousand were sold to customers during the first half-year.
To realize digital inclusion, our company has offered cloud-based znexus smart devices and Cloud Workspace solutions at very affordable prices. This is of significant value in including communities that were previously excluded from the digital economy because they could not afford expensive smartphones to utilize the telecom and digital infrastructure the company has built over the years.
Enterprise Solutions
In the enterprise solution sector, 3.4 billion ETB revenue was generated during the first half-year, recording 48.5% performance. In the past six months of the budget year, 31 project contracts worth 9.45 billion ETB were signed, bringing the total to 65 project contracts worth 21.07 billion ETB signed since the project’s inception.
During the first six months of the budget year, approximately 346 solutions are under development, including those in progress: 126 applications/platforms, 63 vertical solutions, 35 smart campus solutions, 34 network solutions, 29 security solutions, 30 energy solutions, 12 smart city solutions, and 17 office solutions. Looking at their current status, 80 are under customer evaluation, 61 are completed, 87 are newly developed, 49 are in the proposal preparation stage, 36 are in the contract signing process, 14 are awaiting approval, 16 are in the documentation phase, and 3 contracts have been terminated.
Ethio telecom is playing a leading role in realizing Digital Ethiopia, particularly by providing massive projects such as smart city, smart campus, digitalization of government services (e-government), and the Fayda national digital ID to various regional and federal institutions.
Service Centers and Partners
During the first six months, 112 additional service centers were added, bringing the total number of service centers to 1,150. Among these, 582 are franchise-owned, 437 are company-owned, and 131 are held by indirect channel partners. The centers were opened in towns that previously had no service centers and in high-traffic areas. This has not only made services more accessible to customers but also created a preferred sales channel by maintaining a close presence everywhere in the competitive market.
According to the distribution strategy implemented by our company, 59 main distributors, 65.2 thousand sub-distributors, and 383.9 thousand retailers are engaged in sales activities. This has raised the total number of partners to 449.3 thousand.
Customer Base
The total number of our telecom service customers has reached 87.1 million, achieving 101.5% of the plan. Out of these, 3.93 million were added within the past six months. Compared to the same period of the previous budget year, it shows an increase of 6.56 million or 8.1%. During the first six months, the number of 90-day active mobile users increased by 2.4 million, reaching 69.1 million.
Customers by Service Type
When viewed by service type, mobile voice customers increased by 8.1% to 84 million, mobile data and internet users increased by 12.7% to 49 million, and fixed broadband increased by 19.2% to 934.7 thousand during the past six months. Meanwhile, due to customer preference shifting toward digital communication alternatives, fixed-line voice customers decreased by 6.2% to 718.3 thousand. Through these services, the teledensity rate reached 77.1%.
In the first half year, a total of 10.2 million service sales were made, representing 112% performance compared to the plan and a 10.1% increase compared to the same period last year.
Revenue Performance
During the first half year, 85.02 billion ETB in revenue was generated, achieving 81.1% of the plan. This shows an increase of 37% compared to the same period last year. By service type, voice services accounted for 30.4%, data and internet 28.3%, international revenue 9.7%, value-added services 9.7%, sales of telecom equipment 3.8%, infrastructure rental 2.6%, telebirr 4.9%, enterprise solutions 4%, national interconnection 0.8%, and other services 5.9%.
The increase in customer base, traffic growth through customer usage, expansion and improvement of 4G network capacity, infrastructure expansion, provision of new products and services, growth in partnership collaboration, internal process optimization, capacity building of employees and leadership contributed significantly to the revenue growth. On the other hand, foreign currency shortages had a negative impact on the revenue performance of devices and enterprise solutions.
Foreign Currency Generation
Regarding foreign currency generation during the first six months, a total of 88.19 million USD was obtained, achieving 83% of the plan. Of this, 69 million USD was revenue from international services, 3.16 million USD from infrastructure sharing rental, and over 16.02 million USD in foreign currency was obtained through telebirr international remittance services. International service revenue showed an increase of 4.6 million USD (7.2%) compared to the same period last year.
Cost Excellence: DO2SAVE
Our company has been implementing a resource management and cost reduction program to enhance a cost-saving culture; through this, over 4.15 billion ETB in cost savings was achieved during the six months, reaching 129% of the plan. Key factors contributing to this success were the implementation of effective resource utilization strategies, collaboration with partners, and the digitalization of daily activities. Beyond cost-saving efforts, activities to create additional revenue sources for the institution resulted in generating over 89.9 million ETB from the sale of decommissioned assets and space rentals. This includes additional income from space rentals and the timely disposal of unserviceable assets and by-products.
Financial Performance
Financial Statements (Unaudited statement of profit or loss)
To achieve the goals set for the first six months, including building network infrastructure, penetrating digital finance services, and remaining a leading digital solution provider, a capital project budget of 52.92 billion ETB and a regular budget of 62.92 billion ETB were allocated. Out of the allocated budget, 67.75% (42.63 billion ETB) of the regular budget and 33% (17.44 billion ETB) of the capital budget were utilized.
To ensure financial health, our company prepares its financial reports according to the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) system; it has been confirmed as “Unqualified” by external auditors up to the 2017 budget year, and the audit for the first half of the 2018 budget year is in progress. Furthermore, key performance indicators such as customer bases, daily revenue, and daily cash flow are strictly monitored every day.
In the first half year, as planned to strengthen profitability by increasing revenue and following cost-saving procedures, the gross profit (EBITDA) reached 42.36 billion ETB. Similarly, a gross profit margin of 49.8% was recorded. Besides, 35.6 billion ETB in taxes was paid to the government during the past six months.
telebirr: Building an Inclusive Digital Economy
By offering telebirr services, our company is playing a significant role in building an inclusive digital economy by simplifying society’s life, facilitating the construction of our country’s digital economy, and bringing a pivotal change to digital finance inclusion. In this regard, it is enabling citizens to easily access digital finance and mobile money services through self-help or nearby agents and service centers across the country, filling the accessibility gap of regular banking services. Overall, telebirr has created a favorable environment for citizens to benefit from the digital economy by providing multifaceted digital solutions and digital finance services in a secure, easy, and convenient way.
telebirr Subscribers
During the first half-year, 4.69 million additional telebirr customers were registered, bringing the total number of telebirr service users to 58.61 million and achieving 99.4% of the plan. The performance shows 13.7% growth compared to the 51.54 million users during the same period of the previous budget year. The government’s digital transformation agenda, integration with many organizations, the increasing adoption of digital payment systems, the launch of many products and services, the development of a user-friendly Super App, customer registration incentives, modernization of the 127-call center, implementation of self-service registration options, and system expansions and upgrades based on customer volume have enabled the increase in customer numbers.
In the first half budget year, our company generated 4.1 billion ETB in revenue from telebirr services, achieving 109.1% of the plan. The revenue growth was driven by the price revision of existing service fees and the introduction of fees for services previously offered for free, an increase in telebirr-to-telebirr money transfers, growth in service links with banks and other institutions, successful collection of overdue telebirr loan service revenue, and an increase in the number of customers, merchants, and agents.
telebirr Transactions
During the first half-year, 1.94 trillion in electronic money transfers were made through telebirr, and since the service began, a total of 6.88 trillion in electronic money has been facilitated within the economy. Beyond digitalizing money transfers in our country, this enables financial services to be significantly inclusive and accessible.
Numerous activities have been done to make telebirr services more accessible, increase the number of our company partners, and enable them to provide various services using telebirr. Consequently, 175 main agents, 383.4 thousand agents, and 363.3 thousand merchants are providing telebirr services. These agents are enabled to register customers, facilitate cash-in and cash-out, sell airtime, and execute bill payments. Furthermore, integration work with 30 banks has been completed, allowing easy money transfers from bank-to-telebirr and telebirr-to-bank.
telebirr’s Digital Financial Service Performance
In collaboration with banks, mobile micro-loans, micro-saving services, and related digital finance services that play a significant role in our community’s overall change and improvement and can bring meaningful economic changes beyond just accessing financial services have been provided. During the first half-year, 4.27 million customers received 8.62 billion ETB in micro-loans, while 1.24 million customers saved over 8.68 billion ETB via telebirr.
Zemen GEBEYA (E-commerce) Performance
It is noted that our company launched a digital commerce platform (E-commerce) named Zemen GEBEYA to modernize and elevate our country’s trading system. Regarding increasing the accessibility and acceptance of Zemen GEBEYA, adjustments were made to delivery prices, making holiday-themed deliveries free, and providing discounts on items, which significantly stimulated Zemen GEBEYA users and digital trading habits. It has particularly served as an indicator that consumer goods used by the majority of the community can be delivered in an affordable and streamlined way, and that manufacturers can present their products to the community through better alternatives.
Consequently, over the past seven months, 506 manufacturers and businesses were enabled to promote and sell 14,529 products, attracting over 33.3-million-page visitors to the e-commerce market; transactions were performed for 163,300 products through 42,400 purchase orders. Through the e-commerce market, transaction activity worth over 158.9 million ETB was made within the business economy.
Human Capital Development
Continuous multifaceted capacity building steps have been undertaken to enhance the company’s human resources with knowledge, skill, attitude, and adaptability to changing conditions, and future-ready to sustain our company’s competitiveness. Among these steps is the design of training programs provided internally or in collaboration with partner organizations. Accordingly, 23,963 training sessions were provided over the past six months to enhance employee capacity, with 9,306 employees trained in person, virtually, and through coordination, and 14,657 employees trained via digital platforms.
Furthermore, our company has designed and is implementing a strategy to bring female employees into leadership. Among these activities, various works have been performed to increase the number of female leaders; for instance, a needs assessment survey was conducted, and based on the study, capacity-building training was provided to female managers in the technical and commercial sectors. Moreover, when organizational changes and departmental reforms were made, activities were performed to promote women to positions of responsibility.
Job and Income Opportunity Creation
Beyond fulfilling its key enabling role in building the digital economy ecosystem for our country’s comprehensive growth, our company is excellently discharging its national responsibility by creating sustainable job and income opportunities for citizens.
Accordingly, in addition to the direct job opportunities created for 44,031 employees, wide-ranging job and income opportunities have been established through product and service distribution, agent networks, and various partnership models. Specifically, this ecosystem supports 449,273 distribution partners and telebirr agents, 1,648 local suppliers, 1,203 Value-Added Service (VAS) partners, 140 franchise partners, and 668 international partners.
In general, through the execution of our growth strategy across sectors such as security, network deployment, maintenance, traffic control, construction, environmental care (seedling maintenance), and roles created via third-party agreements, we have successfully created job and income opportunities for approximately 1.3 million citizens active within our ecosystem. This achievement is further supported by more than 497,000 business agreements, demonstrating our company’s pivotal role in strengthening the national economy and enhancing the financial capacity of our citizens.
On the other hand, activities such as periodic organizational restructuring and human resource placement are being conducted continuously to increase our company’s productivity, rapidly implement new technologies and business models, and leverage new opportunities while resisting challenges and turning them into opportunities.
Cybersecurity
Since cyberattacks are a major challenge for the rapidly growing digital service, it has been possible to protect the company’s main assets from data theft, service interruption, and revenue loss by building our company’s human resource capacity, modernizing processes, and equipping ourselves with the most advanced technologies to defend against attempted attacks. All attacks were repelled without damage, primarily because a 24/7 cybersecurity control system was implemented, a technology-centered system access authorization was applied to manage the security of the company’s core systems, and modern technologies were used to detect attack attempts in advance.
Regarding revenue loss reduction, our company is performing continuous monitoring and taking actions; during the first half-year, the target was to keep fraud-related leakage below 0.15% of revenue, and it was reduced to 0.13%, showing over 115% success. This was achieved by understanding fraudulent behaviors, preventing them in advance, and conducting continuous analysis and monitoring.
The speed of responding to customer complaints related to data security and fraud was reduced to 2.1 hours, enabling the timely resolution of 23,578 complaints. This shows improvement compared to the 2.28 hours during the same period of the previous budget year. In terms of network and system capacity enhancement, by significantly increasing the availability of security systems, various maintenance adjustments, and system upgrades, it has been possible to effectively withstand the increasing volume of data and cyber threats by enhancing system capacity and accessibility.
Regarding telecom infrastructure protection, numerous discussions were held with relevant stakeholders, and agreements were reached to work in coordination to prevent damage. To address ongoing infrastructure damage, extensive awareness-raising work on telecom infrastructure protection was conducted for 471 thousand individuals across various community groups, security forces, and government leadership at different levels.
Corporate Social Responsibility
To discharge its social responsibility, our company is engaged in research-backed activities across the country organized under CSR plans and linked with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to ensure the comprehensive development of the country and its citizens. These primarily target projects such as education, health, environmental protection, green development, and beautification that can enhance citizens’ economic capacity, bridge the digital awareness gap, ensure inclusion, and strengthen the community’s long-term development.
During the first half-year, a total of over 383.46 million ETB was contributed, consisting of 74.9 million ETB in kind and 308.5 million ETB in cash. This included 117.55 million ETB for education, 9.66 million ETB for health, 81.62 million ETB for humanitarian aid, 19.87 million ETB for environmental protection, green development, and beautification, and 154.79 million ETB for national projects.
Based on its commitment to preventing environmental pollution, creating a clean and livable environment for our community, and achieving sustainable development goals, our company showed high commitment by facilitating environmental protection activities and the Green Legacy program, causing seedlings to be planted across the country with the participation of our company employees and partners.
In addition to the support provided by the company, our employees made voluntary contributions, providing 1.16 million ETB in cash and various materials to identified economically disadvantaged community groups, as well as donating blood and providing volunteer services, performing highly encouraging and exemplary deeds.
National Digital ID Registration Performance
Since digital ID is crucial for accelerating Ethiopia’s digital growth, our company is highly discharging its national responsibility by continuing to focus on accelerating and expanding the registration and printing process nationwide. To make the registration work accessible, over 3,500 registration devices are being used in all parts of the country—namely across 12 regions, 2 city administrations, 119 zones, 867 woredas, and over 1,120 towns—enabling citizens to benefit from the service.
To ensure the registration work is streamlined and community-centered, extensive work was done by coordinating with all regional labor and skill bureaus to hire registration professionals, including local residents. Consequently, by hiring over 3,200 employees, providing necessary training, performing appropriate supply work, and establishing a permanent technical and support team to solve recurring challenges, uninterrupted service is being provided.
Accordingly, out of the 32 million citizens registered nationwide, Ethio telecom registered 22 million, performing 69% of the total registration. In the performance of the past first half budget year, out of the 12 million citizens registered nationwide, Ethio telecom registered 10.8 million, taking the lion’s share by performing 90% of the total registration.
On the other hand, to build trust in the service and meet customer needs, Ethio telecom has operationalized 24 ID printing machines, prepared and made accessible over 340 distribution points, and supported the distribution process with a system, currently enabling nearly 6 million citizens to have printed IDs.
Cross-border Service Provision (Overseas Operation)
One of the goals in our company’s “Next Horizon: Digital and Beyond 2028” strategy is to operate outside the country and become a leading digital solution institution in Africa. Accordingly, it is establishing numerous business relationships to work with telecom service providers in various countries, one of which is with CAMTEL (Cameroon Telecommunications), the state-owned telecom provider in Cameroon.
The basis for this partnership is Ethio telecom’s strategic plan to transform itself from a regular telecom operator into a technology company (TechCo), specifically focusing on expanding digital infrastructure access, providing high-value digital platforms beyond standard voice and data communication, and integrating financial, social, and government services based on the successful telebirr ecosystem.
Challenges and Measures Taken
Major challenges that influenced performance occurred during the first half-year. Primarily, financial shortages, foreign currency supply shortages, market price fluctuations and macroeconomic conditions, development works, accidents, security problems, cable theft, and damage to telecom infrastructure, telecom fraud, power interruptions, and fuel shortages were the main ones. Efforts were made to find solutions by seeking financial alternatives with international financial institutions and working closely with federal and regional government bodies.
Key Success Factors
Key factors for the success achieved by our company include the strategic leadership and unreserved support of the Ethio telecom Board of Directors, visionary leadership and efficient administration, employee commitment and synergy, effective project management and performance, institutional efficiency and effective strategy, strong partnerships and stakeholder management, our customers’ desire to stay with us, our company’s social responsibility and good reputation, investments and implementations in strategically significant technologies and platforms, as well as financial sustainability and cost-saving efforts.
Awards and Recognitions
Our company received various recognitions and awards over the past six months, the main ones are:
- The Ethio telecom Board of Directors recognized our CEO Frehiwot Tamru for her outstanding leadership, strong commitment, and the success of our company’s transformation journey.
- Zemen GEBEYA received high recognition and an award from the Ethiopian Ministry of Trade and Regional Integration for its outstanding performance in the digital commerce (e-commerce) sector.
- Following the completion of the Dam, our company received recognition and an award from the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam Coordination Project Office for its comprehensive support over the past years as a “Symbol of Possibility,” enabling mobile users to express their joy and provide financial support by sending short messages to 8100-A and 8120, allowing all Ethiopians to leave their mark.
- PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard): The renewal of the PCI DSS certification is a major success that strengthens the reliability of Ethio telecom’s financial system, particularly telebirr and other digital payments. By meeting these strict international security requirements, the institution guarantees that customers’ sensitive financial information is highly protected, building full customer trust by eliminating payment-related risks.
- We are the first and only company in Ethiopia to receive the GSMA Mobile Money Certification, which is the only international certification uniquely designed for mobile money services. In the first half-year, we fully met approximately 280 evaluation criteria. This significantly strengthens our competitiveness and acceptance in the country’s digital financial services market.
In conclusion, as the success achieved in the first half-year is a result of collective effort, we extend our heartfelt gratitude to our esteemed Ethio telecom family, our valued customers, as well as our strategic partners, including distributors, suppliers, media institutions, and all stakeholders. We reaffirm our commitment to continuing and strengthening our nation’s digital transformation journey to realize a Digital Ethiopia.
Ethio telecom
January 29, 2026
