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AXIAN Telecom, controlled by Hassanein Hiridjee, crossed the billion-dollar revenue line in 2025 with room to spare, posting full-year revenues of $1.69 billion as the pan-African operator accelerated across mobile data, financial services and two significant acquisitions.
Revenue rose 20.2% compared with 2024, the company said in its full-year earnings release. Adjusted EBITDA grew 15.8% to $728.4 million. Strip out the effect of currency movements across AXIAN's varied operating markets and the underlying numbers are only slightly softer: revenue up 17%, EBITDA up 13%. Either way, the direction is clear.
The growth was partly inorganic. AXIAN pointed to the acquisitions of Wananchi Group and Yas and Mvola Comoros as contributors to the performance, alongside what it described as strong underlying momentum in Tanzania and Madagascar, its two most established markets. Both delivered double-digit growth on their own in 2025, which matters because it shows the company is not simply buying revenue it cannot generate organically.
Wananchi is the more consequential of the two acquisitions strategically. The Kenyan-based group brought fixed broadband and pay television into AXIAN's portfolio, adding a segment that sits apart from the group's historically mobile-heavy model. That diversification has been deliberate. AXIAN has been building toward a broader digital infrastructure and services identity, rather than positioning itself as a pure mobile operator competing on price and coverage alone.
The Yas and Mvola Comoros deal reinforced that direction. Comoros is a smaller market, but the transaction deepened AXIAN's presence in mobile financial services alongside connectivity, strengthening the fintech thread that runs through the group's growth ambitions.
Mobile financial services and data subscriptions were both rising during 2025. AXIAN's earlier quarterly disclosures had already flagged growing numbers of active data users and mobile money customers, with Tanzania in particular showing strong momentum. Those subscriber and usage metrics help explain why revenue growth held firm even in markets where telecom competition is relentless and pricing pressure does not let up.
The company's relationship with international capital markets has also been maturing. AXIAN Telecom Holding carries long-term credit ratings of B+ with stable outlooks from both S&P and Fitch. It publishes full audited financials and hosts bondholder calls tied to its results, commitments that reflect how much more closely its lenders and institutional investors are watching the business as it scales. A group that was once lightly covered by international analysts is becoming a name that bond investors and ratings desks track on schedule.
The broader AXIAN Group, whose chief executive Hassanein Hiridjee has been building out what is now one of Africa's more ambitious conglomerate platforms spanning telecom, fintech and digital infrastructure, benefits directly from the telecom arm's performance. AXIAN Telecom is one of the group's most visible and financially significant assets, and a sustained run of earnings growth strengthens the parent's standing across all its financing and partnership conversations.
There are real complications in the picture. Madagascar still accounts for around 35% of consolidated EBITDA, making the group's earnings profile sensitive to conditions in a frontier economy with its own currency and regulatory dynamics. Foreign exchange effects were meaningful enough in 2025 that AXIAN broke them out separately in its reporting, and they will remain a factor as the company operates across multiple African currencies simultaneously.
The integration challenge is also real. Absorbing Wananchi and the Comoros assets while maintaining operational discipline across the existing network is not straightforward. AXIAN's EBITDA margin narrowed slightly relative to revenue growth in 2025, which is normal for a business digesting acquisitions, but sustaining that discipline in 2026 will require execution.
AXIAN also announced a partnership with AST SpaceMobile in March 2026 to launch a direct-to-device space-based mobile broadband network across Africa, a move that aligns with the group's push into next-generation connectivity. The Yas brand has been entering global telecom brand rankings, a sign the company is working to build a regional consumer identity that goes beyond any single market.
A group that once drew its identity almost entirely from Madagascar now posts billion-dollar revenues, carries international debt ratings and is negotiating satellite partnerships. The trajectory has changed.
