Safaricom's 2026 Sustainable Business Report highlights the company's technological advancements and performance. The report details the company's customer growth, with 57.93 million customers in Kenya, a 20.1% increase, and 13.6 million customers in Ethiopia. The company's M-PESA service processed 46.41 billion transactions worth KES 41.68 trillion, with a 25.1% increase in transaction count and an 8.9% increase in value.
The report reveals that M-PESA's thirty-day active customers grew from 35.8 million to 41.7 million, averaging roughly 1,470 transactions per second throughout the year. The Fintech 2.0 rebuild increased capacity from 4,500 to 6,000 transactions per second, with room to scale past 12,000. The report also notes that the gap between transaction count and value growth points to smaller payments, likely driven by M-PESA Kadogo, which makes small transfers and merchant payments free.
Safaricom's report highlights significant growth in developer activity, with 89,780 integrations and 149,834 developers. The Daraja 3.0 platform added security APIs for fraud detection and identity verification. The company's credit and investing services, including Ziidi, let people invest from KES 100, with 2.2 million active investors and KES 21.1 billion in assets. Ziidi Trader, launched in February 2026, allows NSE share trading from a phone, with 84,000 trading subscribers by year-end.
The report emphasizes Safaricom's focus on security and fraud prevention. The company detected about 1.25 billion intrusion attempts and investigated more than 130,000 security events. Safaricom reports no confirmed material breaches and says DDoS attacks were mitigated without material customer impact. The company is modernizing its Cyber Defence Centre with a next-generation SIEM, AI-powered defense, and an in-house threat-intelligence platform.
Safaricom's report highlights improvements in network population coverage, with 98.6% coverage for 2G and 3G, 97.9% for 4G, and 30% for 5G. The company has 1,879 5G sites and 21,000km of metro fibre. LTE on 700 MHz is deployed at about 62% of sites. Pre-connectorised fibre components covered 25,000 homes, estimated to cut deployment costs by 15% to 30%.
The report notes that customer perception of the network was mixed, with overall network NPS rising from 75 to 77, and data speed improving. However, voice quality fell from 84 to 80, and data coverage fell from 70 to 66. Safaricom's access and affordability efforts include tokenised Wi-Fi from KES 10 an hour, time-based mobile browsing, and a fall in average data price per MB to 5.44 cents from 6.19 cents.
The report highlights Safaricom's efforts to reduce its environmental impact, with a focus on power and emissions. The average energy mix is 78% grid, 5% solar, and 17% diesel. Solar-equipped sites rose from 1,432 to 2,028, and about 800 sites got lithium-ion batteries and modern rectifiers. However, Scope 1 and 2 emissions rose 9.1% to 56,354 tCO2e, and diesel is still 79.74% of Scope 1.
Key points
- Safaricom detected 1.25 billion cyberattack attempts in 2026.
- The company's M-PESA service processed 46.41 billion transactions worth KES 41.68 trillion.
- Safaricom's customer base grew to 57.93 million in Kenya and 13.6 million in Ethiopia.
