Safaricom Gains 10 Million More Lines, Airtel Shrinks

Safaricom PLC added more than 10.3 million active mobile lines over the four quarters of the 2025/26 financial year, a haul larger than the entire industry’s net gain and one that has pushed the operator’s share of Kenya’s mobile market to its highest level in years.

Data published by the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) in its four quarterly sector statistics reports shows Safaricom’s active subscriptions rose from 51.12 million at the end of September 2025 to 61.45 million by June 30, 2026 — a 20.2 per cent expansion. Over the same period Airtel Networks Kenya’s base fell by 456,549 lines to 23.6 million, while Telkom Kenya shed more than a third of its subscribers, dropping to 545,765.

The whole market grew by 9.68 million lines in that window. Safaricom added 10.32 million.

“During the 2025/26 Financial Year, the telecommunications sub-sector demonstrated continued growth with active mobile subscriptions growing to reach 88.0 million as of 30th June 2026,” the Authority says in its fourth-quarter report. “This growth is attributed to the various customer win-back campaigns run by mobile network operators during the reference period.”

Those campaigns have not been evenly rewarded. Safaricom’s share of mobile subscriptions moved from 65.3 per cent in September 2025 to 66.8 per cent in December, 68.9 per cent in March and 69.8 per cent by June. Airtel’s slid the other way across the same four readings — 30.7, 29.2, 27.6 and 26.8 per cent — a loss of nearly four percentage points in nine months.

“As at the end of June 2026, Safaricom PLC recorded the highest market shares in mobile subscriptions (69.8%), mobile broadband subscriptions (64.4%) and mobile money transfer (88.8%),” the regulator notes. “On the other hand, Telkom Kenya recorded the least market shares across the three service categories.”

The lines are, by the regulator’s own definition, commercially live. CA counts only active subscriptions, which it defines as “subscriptions that have generated revenue in the last 3 months.”

What they are not, necessarily, is new customers. Kenya ended June with 88.0 million SIM cards but only 79.68 million handsets connected to the networks — 8.3 million more lines than devices to put them in. Mobile penetration has climbed to 165.0 per cent of the population from 149.4 per cent nine months earlier, a level that can only be reached by Kenyans holding two and three lines each. The prepaid-to-postpaid ratio, steady at 98:2 for most of the year, moved to 97.1:2.9 by June as Safaricom’s postpaid book grew from 1.26 million to 1.80 million lines.

The scale advantage is starkest in traffic. Safaricom carried 80.33 billion voice minutes over the financial year against Airtel’s 46.19 billion, and 52.79 billion SMS messages against Airtel’s 4.33 billion — the latter down from 6.52 billion the year before. In the April-June quarter alone Safaricom accounted for 64.93 per cent of domestic voice minutes and 93.07 per cent of SMS traffic.

Money is where the gap widens further. CA has for the first time published operator-level revenue splits, showing Safaricom takes 72.5 per cent of industry voice revenue, 74.4 per cent of data revenue, 73.4 per cent of SMS revenue and 96.8 per cent of the “other services” line — the bucket that carries mobile money, roaming and bulk SMS, and which the Authority says “constituted the greatest share of 2025 mobile service revenues at 42.8 per cent.” Weighted across the service mix, that puts roughly 84 shillings in every 100 the sector earns with the market leader, against a subscriber share of 69.8 per cent.

Industry revenue itself is climbing far more slowly than the subscriber count. Mobile service revenue “rose by 3.6 per cent to record KSh. 440.9 billion in 2025,” the fourth-quarter report states — the weakest growth in the five-year series the Authority charts, which recorded rises of 7.7, 13.2 and 10.7 per cent in the three preceding years.

There are pressure points. M-Pesa’s share of mobile money subscriptions eased from 89.7 per cent in September to 88.8 per cent in June as Airtel Money edged up from 10.3 to 11.1 per cent. Registered mobile money agents fell 5.6 per cent in the final quarter, to 568,463. And usage per line is thinning: minutes of use per subscription per month dropped to 125.1 from 128.1 in the March quarter, with messages down to 53.5 from 55.4, which the regulator attributes to “increased uptake of over-the-top messaging services such as WhatsApp.”

The one segment where Safaricom’s lead is being genuinely contested is fixed internet — a market CA describes as “experiencing unprecedented growth, driven by intense competition, a shifting digital economy, and aggressive infrastructure rollouts.” Safaricom crossed one million fixed data subscriptions for the first time in June, reaching 1,024,950, but its share moved only from 35.6 to 36.1 per cent as Jamii Telecommunications, Ahadi Wireless and Vilcom expanded behind it.

Where the new lines went

Safaricom took more new mobile lines over the four quarters of the 2025/26 financial year than the entire Kenyan market gained, while Airtel and Telkom both ended the year smaller than they started it.

Active mobile subscriptions by operator

Quarter-end, millions of lines

Share of mobile subscriptions

Per cent of all active lines in the market

The underlying numbers

Source: Communications Authority of Kenya, Sector Statistics Reports, Q1–Q4 of FY 2025/26. Figures are active subscriptions at each quarter end. The Authority defines an active subscription as one that “has generated revenue in the last 3 months”.

The change column covers September 2025 to June 2026, the span of the four published quarterly reports. Operator-level figures for June 2025 sit in the previous financial year’s fourth-quarter report and are not included here.

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