Ethiopia has emerged as the largest telecom market in East Africa, with 86.6 million mobile subscriptions – representing 27.49% of the region’s total 314,988,917 subscriptions in 2024.
This is according to the Africa Telecom 50 Report 2024 (East Africa) published by REVENUE Magazine, one of the trade publications of Alford Conferences Limited. The report ranks the region’s leading mobile network operators (MNOs) based on the latest available subscription data. The report covers the period up to January 31, 2025.
Tanzania is the 2nd biggest market with 80,662,041 subscriptions, while Kenya comes 3rd with 71,375,093. These top three countries account for 238,637,134 mobile subscriptions or 75.76% of the market in East Africa in 2024.
“In compiling the mobile subscription figures for each of the licensed and active mobile network operators (MNOs) in the 12 countries of East Africa, we relied, first of all, on the market share data of these MNOs supplied by the telecommunications industry regulator of these countries.” CEO of Alford Conferences Limited, Mr. Frederick Apeji, said.
The other sizable markets in the region during the period under review are Uganda with 37,151,000 mobile subscriptions, and Rwanda, with 13,480,095 subscriptions. The remaining seven countries of the region (Somalia, Burundi, South Sudan, Comoros, Eritrea, Djibouti and Seychelles) each have a subscription base of less than 10 million.
The report also shows that Ethio Telecom of Ethiopia is the biggest telco in the region, with 80,500,000 mobile subscriptions, followed by Safaricom Kenya with 46,567,767 subscriptions. Vodacom Tanzania comes in third position with 24,708,053. TIGO Tanzania and MTN Uganda rank 4th and 5th with 23,506,864 and 21,551,000 respectively. The five other MNOs which make up the top 10 in East Africa in 2024 are Airtel Kenya with 21,517,842 subscriptions, Airtel Tanzania with 19,824,410, Airtel Uganda with 15,600,000, Halotel Tanzania with 11,031,495, and MTN Rwanda with 8,331,304.
Beyond its raw numbers of 86,600,000 mobile subscriptions, the report notes that Ethiopia falls short in teledensity in the region. Teledensity measures the number of active telephone lines available to each person in a country at any given year. With a population of 132,059,767 (based on data from Worldometer as of October 31, 2024), the country has a current teledensity of 65.58%, ranking 7th in the region.
On average, the Africa Telecom 50 Report 2024 (East Africa) shows that more telephones are available to people, per capita, in Seychelles, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Comoros and Uganda during the period under review than to people in Ethiopia.
Since the advent of telephony in the country more than a century ago, the Ethiopian government had shut out competitors outside the country from its telecom market until August 2022, when it opened the space for Safaricom Kenya. The state-owned operator, Ethio Telecom, had therefore monopolized the entire telecom space all this time, and even today, it still accounts for 92.96% of the market. Compared to the other big East African telecom markets of Tanzania and Kenya, with a teledensity of 117.65% and 126.48%, respectively, Ethiopia has plenty of catching up to do in this critical telecom metric.
In working out this math, the report says Ethiopia will require about 68,000,000 more mobile subscriptions in order to catch up with Tanzania’s teledensity as of today. As for Kenya, it would require about 81,000,000 extra telephone lines.
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