Luxembourg-based telecommunications company Millicom, which focuses exclusively on emerging markets, announced on April 19 that it will finalize the divestment of its African holdings with the sale of the company’s Tanzania operations for an undisclosed sum to Madagascar-based, pan-African operator Axian that was part of the consortium that acquired Millicom’s operations in Senegal in 2018.
The announcement follows a similar deal earlier in April which saw Millicom sign an agreement for the sale of its stake in India’s AirtelTigo to the Ghanaian government.
“Today, Tigo is a leading provider of broadband services to consumers, businesses and governments in Latin America, where penetration and data speeds remain low by the standards of more mature markets. Through our investment-led strategy, we are bringing reliable high-speed mobile and fixed broadband to the communities we serve in the region. With today’s announcement that we are divesting our remaining African businesses, we close a chapter in our history and open another solely focused on the Latin American region,” said Millicom’s CEO, Mauricio Ramos, following the deal, which is estimated to be worth $25 million.
The NASDAQ-listed Millicom currently has more than 52 million mobile subscribers across 11 countries in Latin America and Africa, via its Tigo brand. Since 2017, Millicom has actively divested itself from its operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Senegal and Chad.
The company’s Tanzania operations were Millicom’s largest in Africa with 13 million customers and $365 million in revenue last year. Those returns, however, represented a mere 6 per cent of Millicom’s total revenue in 2020; a point noted by Ramos, who indicated after the April 19th deal that “Millicom is a Latin American focused telecom company with 95 per cent of our revenues coming from that region.”
Axian’s move into Tanzania comes after the company gained notoriety for being the first telecom to Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. roll out 5G in Africa. Axian is one of the biggest investors in the World Bank-funded Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System, a 10,000 kilometer undersea fiber optic cable system that services voice, data, video and the Internet and connects countries in Eastern Africa to the rest of the world.
As part of its first foray into an English-speaking African nation – Axian already operates in Madagascar, Comoros, the French overseas island territories of Réunion and Mayotte, as well as Senegal – the company plans to invest $400 million into Tanzania over the next half-decade.
