Zimbabwean businessman and investor Edd Branson has entered the mobile telecommunications space with a 100 million fund to buy equity in African GSM operators.
Branson and his consortium are eyeing a controlling stake with 3 bullish bids on African GSM operators.
Documents obtained revealed that Branson had placed a combined $30 million USD bid for a leveraged buyout on embattled GSM operators in Gambia , Benin and Chad with the deals now at different stages.
Branson is leading a consortium of investors under the New York based Afri-USA Business Initiative.
The African mobile network space is dominated by 6 players namely Vodacom, Telefonica, Airtel , Orange and Beeline which are not indigenous African companies and MTN is the only indigenous giant in the GSM space worth $ 13 billion.
An insider revealed that Branson’s consortium had major interests in Benin’s telecom market which continues to be restricted by the poor condition of the country’s fixed-line infrastructure, and the consortium had deployed funds for Benin’s fibre infrastructure development.
The insider also revealed that Chad was on their radar with a memorandum of private placement already received. Chad’s telecommunications market is still developing. Penetration rates in all telephone market sectors are at 40.2% and Internet at 18%.
Chad’s mobile sector is growing fast because of competition between two foreign-owned networks – Bharti Airtel (formerly Zain), and Millicom which was sold to Morocco Telecom in 2019 (Tigo). The national telecom and fixed-line operator, Sotel Tchad, operates the country’s third mobile network. The mobile networks offer basic mobile data services using GPRS and EDGE technology as well as 3G/4G the entry of Branson and his consortium into the market would be a game changer.
In Gambia the consortium has identified an embattled entity with talks of the consortium taking over a 49% stake in the company already at advanced stages.
The Afri-USA Business Initiative has pulled major resources towards the mobile telecommunications space with hedge funds and an investment bank contributing to the $100 million war chest mobilised by Branson.
Source – Byo24
