The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) recently released its second quarter sector statistics report for the 2025/2026 financial year, covering October to December 2025. On its own, the report shows steady growth across most indicators. But the real story only emerges when you lay this report alongside the three that came before it.
Taken together, the four quarterly reports spanning January to December 2025 paint a picture of a country whose digital economy didn’t just grow. It shifted gears.
Here is what changed across those 12 months, and what it means.
Kenya’s Digital Economy in 2025
Mobile money approached saturation
At the start of 2025, 45.4 million Kenyans were subscribed to a mobile money service. That translated to a penetration rate of 86.6 per cent. By December, that figure had climbed to 51.4 million subscriptions, pushing penetration to 98 per cent of the population.
That is an addition of roughly 6 million mobile money subscriptions in a single calendar year. The steepest jump came in the final quarter, when 2.7 million subscriptions were added in just three months, a surge the CA attributed to the festive season spending that typically accompanies the October to December period.
The registered agent network also expanded significantly, from 415,163 in March to 501,399 by December. That is an additional 86,000 points where Kenyans can deposit, withdraw, or transfer money. The expansion of this physical infrastructure remains critical. Digital transactions still depend on a human network to bridge cash and mobile wallets, particularly outside major urban centres.
At 98 per cent penetration, though, the subscriber growth story is nearing its ceiling. What happens next will be defined not by how many people have accounts, but by how often they use them and for what.
Smartphones overtook feature phones decisively
In March 2025, Kenya had 42.3 million smartphones and 32.6 million feature phones connected to mobile networks. By December, smartphones had surged to 48.7 million while feature phones fell to 29.6 million. Smartphone penetration climbed from 80.8 per cent to 92.9 per cent.
The crossover is now irreversible. Feature phone numbers declined in three of the four quarters, losing more than 3 million units over the year. The shift is being driven by falling smartphone prices, with entry-level Android devices from TECNO, itel, and Infinix. But it is also being pulled by services that require a smartphone to function properly. App-based mobile money features, internet messaging, and streaming all work poorly or not at all on feature phones.
This transition has downstream effects across the entire digital economy. More smartphones means more data consumption, more app usage, more mobile commerce, and less SMS.
Data consumption accelerated quarter after quarter
Total mobile broadband consumption grew from 576,459 terabytes in the January to March quarter to 755,095 terabytes in the October to December period. That is a 31 per cent increase in data consumed across the year. Mobile broadband subscriptions grew from 44.4 million to 51.5 million over the same period.
The technology breakdown tells its own story. 4G subscriptions grew from 36.3 million to 44.2 million. 5G subscriptions rose from 1.18 million to 1.74 million. Meanwhile, 3G subscriptions fell from 7.0 million to 5.7 million and 2G declined from 12.7 million to 10.4 million. Kenyans are migrating to faster networks, and once they do, they consume significantly more data.
The average mobile broadband user consumed 14.6 GB per month by December, up from 13.0 GB in March. But the 5G figures stand out. The average 5G subscriber consumed 46.4 GB per month by the end of the year, up from 27.6 GB in March. That is a 68 per cent increase in per-user consumption in under a year. Early 5G adopters are heavy users, and their appetite is growing faster than anyone else’s.
Voice grew. SMS did not.
One of the more counter-intuitive trends across 2025 is that voice calls kept growing even as the narrative around data dominance strengthened. Domestic voice minutes increased from 28.8 billion in the January to March quarter to 31.5 billion in October to December. Average minutes of use per subscription per month climbed from 126.5 to 133.9.
SMS went the other direction. After a brief uptick to 15.2 billion messages in the April to June quarter, SMS traffic fell to 14.7 billion and then 14.4 billion in subsequent quarters. The CA itself points to the growing uptake of internet-based messaging services as the primary cause.
The divergence is important. Voice remains sticky because it is a real-time, direct communication tool that works regardless of internet quality. SMS, by contrast, competes directly with WhatsApp and other messaging apps that offer richer functionality for free over data connections. As smartphone penetration rises and data becomes cheaper, SMS will continue to lose ground.
Fixed internet and submarine capacity expanded
Fixed internet subscriptions grew from 1.86 million in March to 2.46 million by December, a 32 per cent increase. Fibre optic connections drove most of this growth, rising from 1.13 million to 1.38 million. Safaricom maintained the top position among fixed internet providers at 34.9 per cent market share, followed by Jamii Telecommunications at 20.1 per cent and Wananchi Group at 11.1 per cent.
International bandwidth capacity also expanded. The total available submarine cable capacity remained flat through September at 22,311 Gbps before jumping 8.3 per cent to 24,161 Gbps in the final quarter. The increase was driven by new capacity being lit on the PEACE cable (up 43.9 per cent), LION 2 (up 35.8 per cent), and DARE 1 (up 16.4 per cent). Utilised bandwidth grew by 22.5 per cent in the same quarter, suggesting that demand is keeping pace with supply.
The SIM market is stabilising
Total mobile SIM subscriptions rose from 76.2 million in March to 78.4 million by December. But the growth rate slowed dramatically. After a 6.7 per cent surge in the January to March quarter, driven by operator win-back campaigns, quarterly growth decelerated to 1.0 per cent, then 2.1 per cent, then just 0.1 per cent.
At 149.5 per cent penetration, Kenya now has roughly 1.5 SIM cards for every person in the country. The market is approaching a natural ceiling where new subscriptions largely reflect churn and multi-SIM behaviour rather than genuinely new users coming online.
What the numbers tell us
Kenya’s 2025 was not about any single breakthrough. It was about compounding shifts that reinforced each other. Cheaper smartphones drove higher data consumption. Higher data consumption made internet messaging more attractive than SMS. Mobile money penetration approached universality. Faster networks encouraged heavier usage.
The challenge for 2026 is different. Growth rates in SIM subscriptions and mobile money are naturally decelerating as the market saturates. The next phase will be about depth rather than breadth: how much data each user consumes, how many transactions flow through mobile wallets, and whether the infrastructure being laid across submarine cables and fibre networks can keep up with demand that shows no sign of slowing.
The numbers from 2025 suggest that Kenya’s digital economy is no longer being built. It is being used.
All data in this article is sourced from the Communications Authority of Kenya’s Sector Statistics Reports for Q3 FY 2024/25 (January–March 2025), Q4 FY 2024/25 (April–June 2025), Q1 FY 2025/26 (July–September 2025), and Q2 FY 2025/26 (October–December 2025). Reports are available at ca.go.ke/statistics.
