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Airtel Africa revenue earnings grow to $3.9b
Mr Raghunath Mandava, the Airtel Africa chief executive officer
BY
KAMPALA. Airtel Africa has reported revenue growth to $3.9b (Shs13.8 trillion) for the period March.
The telecom, which has operations in 14 African countries, reported a 15 per cent revenue growth in the 2021 first quarter.
Mr Raghunath Mandava, the Airtel Africa chief executive officer, said the telecom posted growth across all regions with particular improvement in Francophone Africa. Mobile money, data and voice all registered double-digit revenue growth while customer number also grew, especially in Nigeria.
Revenue from the East Africa cluster grew by 23.5 per cent while earnings from Francophone Africa registered a 10 per cent growth across key services in which voice grew by 11 per cent, data (31.2 per cent) and mobile money (36 per cent).
East Africa in particular delivered a strong business performance with revenue growth of 15 per cent in reported currency and 23.5 per cent in constant currency, supported by growth in voice, which increased by 15.4 per cent, data (23.9 per cent) and mobile money (47.2 per cent).
The growth was also supported by the expansion of the telecom’s 4G network infrastructure, with 76 per cent of sites now on 4G in East Africa, compared with 66 per cent during the prior year.
This catapulted growth in data usage, which grew by 70 per cent, leading to a 39 per cent increase in data usage per customer per month to 2.7 Gigabytes per customer from 1.9 Gigabytes. Mobile money, which remains a key financial enabler for the telecom, grew by 47 per cent, largely driven by growth in Tanzania, Zambia, Uganda and Malawi.
Mr Mandava also announced that two new minority investors: The Rise Fund and Mastercard are expected to bring $300m into the Airtel Africa Group.
Airtel and Mastercard recently signed a new commercial framework agreement, which details commercial arrangements that seek to deepen commercial partnerships across numerous areas such as card issuance, payment gateway, payment processing, merchant acceptance and remittance solutions, amongst others.
