Pan-African telecommunications company, Airtel Africa has reported a 9.9% increase in its revenue to US$2, 522-million for the nine-month period ended 31 December 2019, coming off the back of strong performance in Nigeria and its East Africa operations.

The company, which operates in 14 African countries, including Zambia, DRC, Malawi and Tanzania, said in a report that it has also registered a subscriber base growth of 9.4% to 107.1 million during the period under review.

The company said growth in the third quarter accelerated to 14.2% in constant currency as a result of continued strong performance in Nigeria and the East Africa region.

The report stated: "...the East Africa and Nigerian markets were key drivers of voice, data and mobile money revenue growth because of the rollout of 4G services across the region as well as an increased outlets offering Airtel mobile money services."

According to the report, the company now has 16.6 million active mobile money customers, up by 20.5% from the previous year while the transaction value was up by 30.2% in constant currency, with an annualised value of more than US$34.3-billion.

In the Southern Africa market, the report said Zambia and Malawi contributed to the improvement in the data revenue growth as a result of increased data usage in these countries.

Airtel Africa chief executive officer Raghunath Mandava said revenue growth continued to be broad-based across voice, data and mobile money.

Mandava said a focus on increasing the number of use cases through international partnerships for mobile money, as well as increasing the distribution footprint helped gain further acceptance of Airtel money.

"Wed have continued to add customers, up by 9.4% this quarter, contributing to an increase in voice revenue. We are also increasingly seeing the success of our strategy to lead in the rollout of our modernised 4G networks, with more than 40% increase in data revenue for the quarter."