Nairobi — Telecommunication company Safaricom targets to grow its customer base away from its home-market as the number of new subscribers will remain flat.

Safaricom Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Peter Ndegwa said that Kenyan telephony market is at its peak, offering little room for growth.

The CEO said their priority will be in Ethiopia and other East African markets.

"As we know business in Kenya will not grow forever so we needed a new geography to start expanding,"

"Ethiopia is our neighbor, is a very big country, very attractive not just to GSM but also to operate mobile financial services," Ndegwa said in an interview with Citizen TV last night.

With success in Kenya, he expects the Ethiopian unit to post similar successes through products such as M-Pesa, data and voice services.

This comes after Safaricom Ethiopia began its telecommunication services in the country, opening a huge market opportunity for the Kenyan unit Safaricom.

It also secured an approval to offer M-Pesa services in the country, boasting over 90 million people.

"Of course, the East African Community is one of the areas we need to get into, however as I said there are no many markets that have one player market. Many of the markets are very competitive so we focused on the market that has the greatest line to win."