Leading Kenyan telecom operator, Safaricom is introducing its ultra-high-speed broadband to the African market a year after its first 5G trial.

This new service would make Kenya become the second African country to to roll out the 5G technology to customers, according to GSMA, an organization representing mobile network operators worldwide. 

According to Safaricom, the new service would target the country’s major cities, and later expand to other parts of the country over the next 12 months.

“During Covid, we have seen a lot of customers wanting to work from home, whether these are individual customers, kids at home, so there are learning from home and also businesses, especially small businesses also start to establish their homes as their offices, so the work stops becoming a place but space, so going forward we have to enable working from home or working from anywhere, in any space,” said Peter Ndegwa, CEO, Safaricom.

Speaking on financial revenue, the new service guarantees an increase in the company’s financial revenue. Thanks to the launch of 4G in 2015, Safaricom had trippled its revenue in 2020. The company is now looking to expand to other countries.

“We are looking at expanding Mpesa beyond Kenya, we have already expressed interest to enter Ethiopia and we are going through that process. Hopefully, if we get in there, we will continue to accelerate growth. More globally, we are looking at partnering with others so that Mpesa becomes the partner of choice for others including Visa and PayPal. We’ve signed many partnerships across the world. ” added Peter Ndegwa.

According to Newzoo’s 2019 Global Mobile Market reports of over 50 million mobile network subscriptions in Kenya, there are just over 10 million smartphone connections,