Tanzania Mobile Money Subscription Up 4% in Q4 2016

Tanzania’s mobile money subscriptions rose by about 4% in Q4 2016 to 18,080,622, from 17,406,033 in Q3 2016.

The growth was included the latest quarterly statistics by the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA).

During Q4 2016, Vodacom’s M-Pesa had the biggest share in Tanzania’s mobile money market (42%), followed by Tigo Pesa (34%), Airtel Money (23%) and Ezy Pesa (1%).

Tanzania’s voice telecom subscriptions rose by 0.2% in Q4 2016 to 40,173,183, from 40,110,187 in Q3 2016.

During the quarter, Vodacom had the biggest share in Tanzania’s telecom market (31%), followed by Tigo (29%), Airtel (26%), Halotel (8%), Zantel (3%), Smart (2%) and TTCL (1%).

Tanzania Telecoms

Tanzania is the second largest telecoms market in East Africa, behind Kenya, with a penetration of 79% of the total population in 2016 and 40m users.

There are 8 Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) in Tanzania: Airtel, Smart, Smile, Halotel, Tigo, TTCL, Vodacom, and Zantel.

Tanzania Mobile Money

Tanzania is one of the world leaders in mobile money transfer (mobile phone-based money transfer), with 44% of adults having access to it and a total of 18m subscribers.

Mobile money penetration rates in Tanzania have reached 65% in urban areas and about 25% in rural areas.

Mobile money transfer was first introduced in Tanzania in 2008. Since then, over 40m mobile money accounts have been registered making 95m mobile money transactions per month in total, transacting an average of USD1.6b per month.