Kenyan telecoms company Safaricom reported a 55 per cent rise in its half-year profit on Thursday, helped by a smaller loss in key expansion market Ethiopia.

Safaricom posted a group operating profit of Ksh65.2 billion ($505.62 million) in the six months to the end of September and maintained its full-year guidance.

Steady growth in its Kenya business continued to be the main profit driver, while its reported loss in Ethiopia dropped by 59 per cent compared to the first half of the previous financial year, which was heavily impacted by a depreciation of the birr currency.

Safaricom launched in Ethiopia in 2022 as the government there opened up the tightly-controlled economy to foreign competition and is hoping its presence in Africa’s second most populous country will power future growth.

The telecoms firm is partly owned by South Africa’s Vodacom and Britain’s Vodafone.

Group service revenue rose to Ksh199.9 billion in the six months to end-September, from 179.9 billion shillings in the same period a year earlier, it said on Thursday.

Revenue from mobile financial service M-Pesa rose to Ksh88.1 billion from Ksh77.2 billion previously.

• A Reuters report