From calls to clicks: Data drives Econet’s growth, outpacing airtime

Econet Wireless Zimbabwe, the country’s leading mobile network operator, is now generating more revenue from its data and internet services than it does from airtime, latest financial shows.

The mobile network operator, in its half results for the 2025 financial year, showed that 47 percent of its revenue came from data and internet services, more than the 41 percent contribution from local airtime.

In the comparative prior year, airtime had 49 percent contribution, while data had a 38 percent contribution. The contribution of short message services (SMS) also came down to 7 percent from 10,6 percent prior year comparative.

Overall data and voice usage grew by 56 percent and 36 percent, respectively, relative to the first half of last year, enabled by the ongoing network modernisation.

In a statement accompanying the period’s financials, Chairman James Myers said the shift in customer needs from traditional services such as voice and short message services (SMS) to data intensive services underscores the need for the business to be innovative and to invest appropriately to ensure that customer experience is not compromised.

“Network expansion and upgrades which all require foreign currency remain imperative to support business sustainability and offer competitive services,” said Myers.

Capital expenditure for the period which was largely channeled towards the modernisation of the network infrastructure amounted to 26 percent of revenue against a prior period comparative of 10 percent. The Group spent ZiG730 million on capex during the period under review according to the cashflow statement.

Myers said the continued network infrastructure modernisation programme has had a positive impact on the business.

“The upgrade will provide increased network performance as well as unlocking new capabilities that will allow the business to offer new, exciting and personalized services for our customers as well as support the transition to a full digital services provider,” he said.

The mobile network operator (MNO) said it deployed an additional 32 5G base stations in Harare with an additional 120 sites planned.

Myers said with the base stations densification, the maximum user throughput has increased significantly, and the business is already realizing significant traffic growth in combined data market share, improved quality of service and user throughputs.

“We expect that this aggressive roll out of next generation data connectivity will allow us to improve user experiences and increase our ability to compete at a level of quality and capacity that is truly world class,” he said.

Overall revenue amounted to $5,027 billion with data and internet services contributing ZiG1,8 billion while local airtime contributed ZiG1,65 billion.

Value added services and short message services (SMS) contributed ZiG375 million while Mobile Money added ZiG367 million.

The mobile money business recorded a 26 percent growth in revenue, driven by an increase in subscribers. Wallet funding increased by 47 percent driven by a combination of increased cashin transactions, payroll processing into wallets and international remittance receipts.

The InsurTech business achieved a marginal 3 percent revenue growth to ZiG160 million compared to the same period last year.

Profit for the period amounted to ZiG347 million up from the re-stated ZiG272 million. The Company declared and paid interim dividends of 0.41 US cents and 0.26 US cents for the half year in respect of all the qualifying ordinary shares of the Company.-ebsinessweekl