According to a story by Godfrey Marawanyika on Bloomberg, Reward Kangai, the CEO of Netone has revealed that the company has been approached by six foreign investors with four having communicated within the last two weeks. Of the six, Bharti Airtel and MTN Group are front runners as they are spread across more African countries than any other operator on the continent.
The two have the capacity to bring down prices and increase the country’s ICT readiness. The mobile sector in Africa and around the world is undergoing a period of consolidation as small and uncompetitive players across the continent have been bought out by operators with a large critical mass.
Econet Wireless is currently Zimbabwe’s leading telecoms firm and maintains a dominant position in its home market. It also operates in Burundi and Lesotho where it is fourth and second respectively (Lesotho only has two mobile operators..). Econet’s status as a medium tier operator has required it to charge premium prices in Zimbabwe so as to bulk up before the ‘great storm’.
Johannesburg based Econet Wireless Group might ultimately become a takeover target as it does not have the critical mass to compete effectively against Pan African and global brands like MTN, Bhartil Airtel and Vimpelcom – which now has an indirect majority interest in Telecel. Similar operations like Comium and Tigo Africa have consolidated their positions by taking over small operators across the continent, EWG has not been able to do this. The battlegrounds have now been set for what can become a very vicious fight to win the hearts of consumers.
Ziscosteel is a parastatal of note that was disposed of by the government to Mauritian based (and Indian owned) Essar Energy whose telecoms affiliate bought out Econet Wireless Kenya before it had started and now operates under the Yu brand. The company could very well be one of the other four contenders. All suitors will have to expertly navigate the complexities of bidding for a parastatal in Zimbabwe.
Techzim has reached out to Bharti Airtel and MTN Group for their comments. Both companies have been profiled on this site as part of a series known as Africa’s Telecoms Titans:
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10 comments
great for the competition
@ClintonMutambo:disqus 2nd sentence in 3rd paragraph isn’t clear (and I suspect extraneous use of ‘respectively’, unless Econet is number 4 out of 2 in Lesotho).
Competition is a good thing, hopefully interconnection will come sooner rather than later. Also; what is the legal situation around VOIP in Zim, anybody?
competition is good coz econet is givin us a raw deal
nw they control all telecomms in zim
nw they create brodacom
oure madness
voip is nw allowed only on intranets
voip pabx only
voip yazara nyika yese iwe you still this zvirikuperera pama intranet… someone please help vince.
Thank you for bringing this to light Tapiwa. l believe its clearer now.
The IAP license allows the license holders to roll out voice (VoIP) this is why Africom, Telco, Broadacom, Aquiva e.t.c are rolling out voice under their IAP licences, before this there were two classes of IAP (class 1 – data only) class 2 – data and voice over IP but POTRAZ revised this and merged the licenses.
You say Techzim reached out to MTN & Bharti for comment. What was their response?
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