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Half a million new subscribers for Africell (Sierra Leone)

  • August 13th, 2008
  • 1:38 pm

Africell subscriber base has increased to more than 500,000 users. According to a media report,  the company has exhausted the numbers available in the 077 code and has been forced to apply for an additional national dialling code, 088. In 2005, Africell launch its GSM network and at the end of march 2008 it claims a 31.1% share of the market.

Two more cellcos to launch in Sierra Leone (Sierra Leone)

  • April 11th, 2008
  • 1:05 pm

Sierra Leone is to get two new GSM operators after the National Telecoms Commission (NTC), gave Israel-based Cellcom and Lybian state-backed vehicle LAPGreen Networks approval to provide services. The watchdog’s executive secretary, Bashir M. Kamara said that the cellcos had been given the green light and would be launching services soon. ‘I can tell you that there are two other registered GSM operators in the country right now that are yet to roll out into the market. They have been approved and have paid their licence fees just like every other GSM service provider. They just need to roll out into the market.

Sierra Leone currently has five mobile operators, serving an estimated 800,000 subscribers at the end of last year. The NTC has recently announced that all GSM operators will be required to achieve 50% population coverage by the end of this year, which could well lead to consolidation in the market as the smaller cellcos may not be able to fund the required expansion.

   
 

Kenya: Goodbye Celtel? (Kenya)

  • September 13th, 2007
  • 3:18 pm

Celtel International is considering a major re-branding strategy that would see it drop the ‘Celtel’ brand and adopt a completely new identity - Zain. The plan is expected to create unique difficulties in Kenya and Nigeria, where the Celtel brand is still quite new, as well as across all non-Arab operations. It is part of a long-term strategy by Kuwait’s MTC Group, which owns the mobile telephone operator, to re-invent itself through the launch of a global brand.

MTC, which has expanded significantly through acquisitions, is seeking to consolidate recent growth under one banner. “We have a new brand that will be launched as single global brand for all our operations,” Dr Saad Al-Barrak, MTC’s deputy chairman and chief executive officer, said recently. “We will start any new operation with this new global brand.”

Controversy

Controversy has already erupted over the brand name chosen. Critics feel Zain, leaked in Kuwait in early August, has limited appeal to cultures outside the Arab world. A recent valuation of MTC by analysts from investment banker Morgan Stanley found that Africa accounted for 70 per cent of the company’s fair value.

MTC Chairman, Mr Asa’ad Al Banwan , Celtel International Chairman, Mr Mo Ibrahim, and MTC Deputy Chairman & Managing Director, Dr Saad Al-Barrak. Photo by MTC

The new logo has also been described as too dark and moody. The re-branding process has reportedly begun in Kuwait and is expected to spread to other MTC-branded operations in the Middle East.

Change will come to Africa and its Celtel-branded operations from 2008. The new changes come shortly after a regional marketing blitz to announce the expansion of Celtel’s borderless mobile network to include the Republic of Congo, Gabon and Democratic Republic of Congo. The service was previously limited to Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. The decision to re-brand will create a costly marketing and logistical challenge for the Kenya and Nigeria operations, given that the two only recently re-branded to Celtel from KenCell and V-Mobile respectively.

The change from KenCell, which began in 2004, is yet to be completed by Celtel Kenya: Many of their telephone booths - admittedly an atrophied part of the business - are still branded KenCell. Nigeria’s switch from VMobile, which began last year, will also have to be scrapped.

A huge task

Speaking to FS during the Second Annual Connecting Rural Communities Africa Forum in Nairobi, Mr Mwaghazi Mwachofi, Celtel International Vice-President for Regulatory Affairs, confirmed that discussions on rebranding were in progress. “Nothing has been decided as yet, nothing concrete,” Mwachofi said when pressed on the matter.

“The Celtel brand is strong and powerful and re-branding is huge task.” MTC Kuwait is also expected to form a new subsidiary, MTC International, as a private company to hold all the MTC Group’s foreign assets and operations.

A newspaper report on the plan several weeks ago saw the Kuwait Stock Exchange halt trading in MTC shares pending clarification of the issues raised.

A local Arabic-language daily had reported that MTC was going to form an entity with $1.73 billion (Sh116 billion) in capital as an umbrella company under which MTC Kuwait and MTC International, called Zain, would operate.

The paper had also said the international unit would sell a stake - possibly 40 per cent or more - in an initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange next year. The re-branding confirms MTC’s ambitions to become one of the biggest mobile operators in the world.

The strategy

According Al-Barrak, the company was looking for a global brand that would work from China to Gabon, in Rio-de-Janeiro and Madras, in Moscow and Iceland. Currently, MTC is looking to fill gaps in sub-Saharan Africa - for example Angola Ethiopia and Senegal - and eyeing Saudi Arabia’s third licence. The company is also making noises about moving its headquarters because of Kuwait’s investor-unfriendly laws.

“The Kuwaiti business environment repels investment and the country’s laws are not good for a financial hub,” Al-Barrak was recently quoted as saying. Kuwait has been dragging its feet on reforms to create a more transparent stock exchange.

Another Kuwaiti law imposes a 55 per cent tax on foreign investors. MTC, Kuwait’s largest publicly traded company, said last week that it could move to Dubai or Bahrain, the Gulf’s financial centres, or to Amsterdam, headquarters of its subsidiary Celtel. The firm operates in Bahrain in partnership with Britain’s Vodafone Group and acquired Netherlands-based Celtel in 2005. It has no presence in Dubai. “MTC is today thinking on the global scale… especially since Kuwait accounts for only 15 per cent of its revenue, (a figure that) will fall below seven per cent in the next two years.” Incorporated in 1983 in Kuwait, MTC now has a presence in 20 countries.

The Group is a leading mobile operator in six Middle Eastern and 14 sub-Saharan African countries providing a comprehensive range of mobile voice and data services to over 29.7 million active individual and business customers.

It operates in Kuwait and Bahrain as MTCVodafone, in Jordan as Fastlink, in Iraq as MTC-Atheer, in Lebanon as MTC-Touch and in Sudan as Mobitel. It also has 14 operations in sub-Saharan Africa as Celtel. These are Burkina Faso, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Kenya, Malawi, Madagascar, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. The company has also won Saudi Arabia’s third mobile license and is expected to roll-out a network soon. The change of identity is part of MTC’s plan to re-brand its operations across all networks in line with their “three by three by three (3×3x3)” strategy.

   
 

World Bank loans Celtel USD320 million for sub-Saharan development

  • June 14th, 2007
  • 1:39 pm

Celtel International, the pan-African cellco which is a subsidiary of the MTC Group of Kuwait has been given a USD320 package of loans from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank, to modernise and develop its mobile networks in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Malawi, Sierra Leone and Uganda. All are countries with obsolete and inadequate fixed-line networks and very low combined penetration rates, for example just 5% in Malawi, 6% in Madagascar and 10% in Sierra Leone at the end of 2006. The loans will be divvied out as follows:

Celtel DRC will get USD150 million
Celtel Madagascar will get USD50 million
Celtel Malawi will get USD30 million
Celtel Sierra Leone will get USD50 million
Celtel Uganda will get USD40 million

‘Since our first cellular investment in the former Zaire in 1989, IFC has continued to invest heavily in the sector in Africa and to strengthen our partnership with companies such as Celtel,’ said Mohsen Khalil, Director of the World Bank Group’s Global Information and Communication Technologies department. He added, ‘Africa is now the fastest growing cellular market, leading the world with truly innovative service offerings such as Celtel’s borderless free roaming across six countries in Africa.’

   
 

World Bank loans Celtel USD320 million for sub-Saharan development

  • June 14th, 2007
  • 1:39 pm

Celtel International, the pan-African cellco which is a subsidiary of the MTC Group of Kuwait has been given a USD320 package of loans from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank, to modernise and develop its mobile networks in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Malawi, Sierra Leone and Uganda. All are countries with obsolete and inadequate fixed-line networks and very low combined penetration rates, for example just 5% in Malawi, 6% in Madagascar and 10% in Sierra Leone at the end of 2006. The loans will be divvied out as follows:

Celtel DRC will get USD150 million
Celtel Madagascar will get USD50 million
Celtel Malawi will get USD30 million
Celtel Sierra Leone will get USD50 million
Celtel Uganda will get USD40 million

‘Since our first cellular investment in the former Zaire in 1989, IFC has continued to invest heavily in the sector in Africa and to strengthen our partnership with companies such as Celtel,’ said Mohsen Khalil, Director of the World Bank Group’s Global Information and Communication Technologies department. He added, ‘Africa is now the fastest growing cellular market, leading the world with truly innovative service offerings such as Celtel’s borderless free roaming across six countries in Africa.’

   
 

IFC backs USD 320 mln in loans for Celtel expansion

  • June 14th, 2007
  • 11:55 am

The International Finance Corporation, part of the World Bank, is supporting a package of USD 320 million in loans to help roll out mobile networks in sub-Saharan Africa. The IFC is contributing USD 160 million, with the remainder coming from commercial banks and bilateral financing institutions. The loan will be to five subsidiaries of Celtel, part of Kuwait’s MTC. Celtel’s subsidiaries are to invest the funds in expanding and upgrading mobile phone networks in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Madagascar and Malawi.