31,600, or 20%, of Africa’s towers are now owned or operated by independent towercos

Kieron Osmotherly

August 11, 2014 12:57 PM

And a further 31,000 towers are currently for sale

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS ANALYSIS IS NOW OUT OF DATE! FOR TOWERXCHANGE’S LATEST ANALYSIS OF THE INDEPENDENT TOWER MARKET IN AFRICA, PLEASE VISIT:

African towercos now own or operate 31,600, or 20%, of Africa’s towers. TowerXchange forecast that proportion will almost double to 38.8% by year end 2014, rising to 50% by the end of 2015 (see Figure 4).

We’ve updated our infographics to reflect three significant pieces of news since issue 8 of the TowerXchange Journal; acquisitions by Helios Towers Africa and IHS, and confirmation of the cancellation of Eaton Towers’ contract with Telkom Kenya/Orange.

Figure 1: Estimated number of towers owned or managed by towercos in Africa

Figure 1a: Count differentiating towers that are owned from those that are managed and marketed by towercos

Helios Towers Africa has acquired the first tranche of 3,100 of Airtel’s African towers. Helios Towers Africa were asked not to reveal in which countries the towers were acquired, but TowerXchange are reasonably confident that DRC and Tanzania plus at least one new country for HTA were included, but we’ll only update the infographic to reflect this when we have confirmed. The deal value is believed to be US$400-550mn – see figure 3. A further 12,000+ Airtel towers remain for sale, with further deals expected to be announced before the TowerXchange Meetup Africa – see figure 6.

IHS announced the acquisition of 2,136 towers from Etisalat Nigeria. We were trying to confirm if this represented all Etisalat‘s Nigerian towers as we went to press – there may be a second deal to follow. The deal takes IHS’s tower count to 6,540 in Nigeria – see figure 1.

TowerXchange are tracking several towercos who are active in or targeting Africa (there are a couple more, but we’re not at liberty to disclose them!):

Communication Towers Nigeria
Frontier Tower Solutions (targeting Burundi)
Hotspot Network Limited (Nigeria)
Infratel (South Africa)
Pro High Site Communication (South Africa)
Shared Networks Tanzania (active infrastructure sharing)
Square1 Infrastructure (Nigeria and South Africa)
TASC (targeting MENA)
TowerCo of Madagascar
Towershare (targeting MENA)

TowerXchange estimate that these towercos own or operate a total of around 800 African towers.

Source: TowerXchange

TowerXchange confirmed that, owing to the financial difficulties of the operator, Eaton Towers’ contract with Orange/Telkom Kenya has been cancelled, temporarily reducing Eaton’s tower count by 1,000 managed towers. Eaton’s team remains on the ground in Kenya waiting for their tranche of the Airtel African tower sale to close.

Meanwhile, Helios Towers Nigeria has raised US$225mn through a bond issue to bid aggressively for some of the estimated 15-17,000 additional Nigerian towers for sale. Helios Towers Nigeria is targeting a tower count of 8-10,000 by year end 2014, and TowerXchange are forecasting that 84% of Nigeria’s towers will be owned or operated by towercos by year end 2014, including Airtel’s and MTN’s towers and leaving only the sites owned by Glo. See figure 7.

If you count only towers that are owned, Helios Towers Africa leads the African market with 7,800 to IHS’s 7,159. If you count towers that are owned and operated, IHS is the market leader with 12,659. See figure 1a.