News

Consolidation is a growing trend in the African telco market, as in other regions.



This week, South Africa's MTN Group announced a potential take over of Egypt's Orascom Telecom.



The pan-African operator has been looking to build its business throughout the continent, which was one of the reasons for merger talks with India's Bharti Airtel last year. However, the Bharti deal failed due to concerns of the South African government and regulators about maintaining the autonomy of their largest national telecom operator.



MTN is looking to raise around USD5 billion to buy assets of Orascom. The Egyptian company has a market value of USD7.3 billion and is around a quarter the size of MTN, with operations in countries as far flung as North Korea to Canada, as well as Egypt, Algeria and Pakistan.



Meanwhile, Bharti has expressed an interest in purchasing Kuwaiti telco Zain and it looks like the two former merger candidates will be in fierce competition for Africa's market share.



Analysts say that this raises the prospects of more mergers and acquisitions as companies like Millicom International Cellular, Portugal Telecom, France Telecom's Orange and Vodafone's Vodacom look for opportunities to grow.



UNI and its affiliates are continuing to organise in MTN and are looking to sign a global agreement with the company which would ensure that all of the company's employees have the opportunity to join a trade union.