Ethiopia awarded a consortium including Vodafone Group, Vodacom and Safaricom a licence to become the country’s first private mobile operator, though a bid led by MTN Group to become a second new entrant was rejected.
New telecommunications operator licensed in Ethiopia
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A woman walks in front of an office of Ethio telecom, till now Ethiopia’s sole telecommunications provider, in Addis Ababa, 26 April 2021, EDUARDO SOTERAS/AFP via Getty Images A private telecommunications operator has been licensed in Ethiopia, but the real test is in how it will operate in the country s heavily controlled media environment.
This statement was originally published on cipesa.org on 24 May 2021.
By Juliet Nanfuka
Ethiopia, one of the world’s last closed telecommunications markets, has been liberalised. On May 22, 2021, the Ethiopian government announced that a new telecommunications license had been awarded to the Global Partnership for Ethiopia – a consortium comprising Kenya’s Safaricom PLC, Vodacom Group, Vodafone Group, the United Kingdom’s development finance institution CDC Group plc, the Japanese-owned Sumitomo Corporation,
MTN sets its sights on Ethiopia again
By Dineo Faku
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AFRICAâS largest telecoms firm, MTN, was considering having another go at becoming a mobile operator in Ethiopia after losing to Kenyaâs Safaricom over a week ago, the group said on Friday.
Ethiopiaâs communications regulator awarded Safaricom, a member of a consortium led by Vodafone, the parent company of Vodacom, MTNâs rival, with a licence to operate telecom services in Ethiopia, Africaâs second-most populous country.
MTN chief executive Ralph Mupita told shareholders during the companyâs 26th annual general meeting (AGM) held virtually on Friday that MTN would apply its mind should the Ethiopian government reissue the licence.
MTN Group CEO, Ralph Mupita has revealed that the telco would consider bidding for the second Ethiopian operating licence after initially losing to Safaricom.
“We took an approach that the opportunity, as strategic as it was, needed to meet our capital allocation framework and the hurdles that we saw given the licence conditions. We were particularly focused on the lack of mobile money in the licencing regime, and there were some issues around how the telco constructs would be accommodated within Ethiopia. We certainly priced for those things and near-term risks that we saw, and we felt that the financial bid there was appropriate.”
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