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Vivendi to acquire Zain African subsidiaries

Friday, June 12th, 2009

Zain, Kuwait-based giant mobile network oprator with operations accross Middle and Africa, is reportedly set to sell out its African subsidiary Celtel International to the French communications and media giant Vivendi Group for up to USD 12 billion.

Celtel International, that was founded by Sudan-born Mo Ibrahim in 1998 became a unit of Zain (formerly MTC Group) in 2005 and since then has been operating in 16 Sub-Saharian Africa countries (Nigeria, Ghana, Zambia, Sierra-Leone, Malawi, Chad, Burkina Faso, Tanzania, Madagascar, Kenya, Uganda, Niger, Gabon,Congo Brazza, DRC and Sudan) and services more than 45 million customers as end of March 2009.
The potential buyer, Vivendi group, is already present in the continent through its 53% stake in Maroc Telecom that in turn holds 51 percent of the historical operators of Mauritania (Mauritel), Burkina Faso (Onatel) and Gabon (Gabon Telecom). As end of march 2009, Maroc telecom reported a consolidated mobile customer base of 17.6 million customers making it an important player in the african mobile market.

If the ongoing talks to sell Zain’s Africa operations succeed, Vivendi will definetly become the second largest group operating mobile communications in Africa with a reported subscriber base of over 62 million customers as end of March 2009 just behind South Africa’s MTN Group that crossed the 64 million customers in the same period.

Eventually, let’s notice that no official reason was given for why Zain is looking to sell the African division though rumours are going that The Kuwait Group is repositionning its international operations to focus more on Asia-Pacific markets that are regarded as more lucrative.

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