TowerXchange takes a deep dive into the African tower industry, providing the most comprehensive directory to date of the key MNOs, towercos, infracos, investors and ESCOs active in the market.
TowerXchange Meetup Africa is taking place on Johannesburg on October 11-12, to find out more details click here.
9mobile: Nigerian MNO, formerly known as Etisalat Nigeria which was rebranded following a takeover by a consortium of banks after defaulting on loan repayments. The operator is active independently and investing in its network modestly now discussion of a takeover have quietened down.
Adenia Partners: Adenia Partners is a private markets investment firm committed to responsible investing and a sustainable Africa. Investor in Eastcastle Infrastructure.
African Infrastructure Investment Managers: Joint venture between Macquarie and Old Mutual with capital at work in IHS Towers and Eastcastle Infrastructure.
African Towers: Ghanaian towerco which owns 250 sites. The company has also deployed DAS at around 50 sites, including in major airports in the country.
Africell: African MNO with a presence in Angola, the DRC, Sierra Leone and Gambia (being market leaders in the latter two). Africell recently launched operations in Angola where it has built 200 sites in Luanda and is a tenant on Unitel and ANTOSC sites, with plans for a nationwide rollout. The company is yet to sell any towers but worked with American Tower in Uganda and works with Helios Towers in DRC. In 2021 Africell pulled out of Uganda to focus its investments on its other opcos.
Africinvest: Tunisian headquartered private equity firm focussed on the African continent and rumoured to have an appetite for towers in the North African region
AMN: Formerly Africa Mobile Networks, AMN is rural towerco with a business model that is now being emulated by others, which combines active and passive telecom infrastructure, with AMN funding the capex and site revenue with MNO tenants. AMN currently operates more than 2,400 base stations in nine countries, with funding in place to take their site count to 5,000 sites. The towerco does lots of development in house, including site acquisition, construction and management, going so far as to buy an OpenRAN vendor called Range Networks in 2020.
Airtel: African subsidiary of Indian operator Bharti Airtel with a presence in 14 African countries and having sold towers in twelve of these (figure 1), with deals agreed or in negotiations in the remaining two. The company has sold towers to each of the big four African towercos, most recently selling their Tanzanian towers to Minara Towers, a joint venture between SBA Communications and Paradigm Infrastructure. Airtel has sold to Helios in the DRC, Congo B, Malawi, Madagascar, and Chad, to American Tower in Nigeria, to IHS in Rwanda and Zambia and to Eaton in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Niger, Kenya and Uganda.
The MNO now retains towers in two markets: Chad and Gabon. Airtel has an ESCO contract in place with Energy Vision in Gabon.
Figure 1: Airtel's tower ownership and transaction costs across its 14 African markets
Aktivco: Camusat’s ESCO which has signed four contracts; three with Orange in Niger, Burkina Faso and Cote d’Ivoire and a fourth with Millicom in Chad which have since been acquired by Maroc Telecom. The company has over 2,000 towers under ESCO management and over 500 towerco sites being implemented for operators in SSA. with plans to increase this to 10,000 in the next four years.
Albright Capital Management: Chaired by former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Albright is an investor and advisory firm dedicated to the emerging markets and an investor in Helios Towers.
Al Karama Towers: Newly formed Senegalese towerco, backed by M&A Capital, signed a deal to acquire Expresso Telecom’s 625 sites in the country but the deal has since lapsed.
American Tower: The world’s largest independent towerco with a global tower count over 220,000. The towerco has completed seven tower transactions of scale in sub-Saharan Africa, with the acquisition of Eaton Tower’s 5,510 sites the latest deal (figure 2). As of Q2 2022, American Tower has 22,776 towers in seven African markets.
The company continues to undertake new builds across its markets and while figures separating new builds from small scale acquisitions and decommissioning activities are not available, the net increase is in the hundreds across their markets. One can take this as a rough proxy for the number of new towers built.
The company has begun to explore opportunities and business models beyond macro sites in Africa, reporting over 70 DAS sites in Ghana. It also acquired fibre player Frogfoot in South Africa, leasing capacity to communications and internet service providers as well as third party operators.
Figure 2: American Tower's major acquisitions in Africa
Figure 3: American Tower's Sub-Saharan African portfolio
ANTOSC: Angola’s first towerco in which managed service provider Anglobal has a 35% share. The towerco was formed in response to new legislation introduced in 2016, preventing new towers being built in close proximity to existing sites and thus mandating MNOs to share infrastructure in order to expand their networks. ANTOSC currently has a portfolio of 100 sites. It is currently looking to raise additional external funding.
Atlas Tower: An African towerco which also has a presence in the US and European markets, Atlas Tower has focussed its business model around organic rather than inorganic growth. Atlas had been the fastest growing towerco in South Africa before being acquired by SBA Communications and rebranded as SBA South Africa. Atlas Tower has remained active in Kenya with 248 towers and counting.
BCTek Engineering: Nigerian towerco with a 20 year contract to manage and market a portfolio of 700 towers originally built as a surveillance network, over 80% of which are police compounds.
Biswal: telecoms support services company providing equipment, managed services and power generation to the tower industry. Biswal operate in Nigeria where they provide ESCO services to IHS Towers, MTN and Airtel.
Blackstone: Serial towerco investor currently working with Phoenix Tower International. Blackstone has previously evaluated investment opportunities in one of Africa’s privately owned towercos.
Capital Group Private Markets: Private equity fund focus on emerging markets with a diverse portfolio. Major shareholder in Eaton Towers, prior to Eaton’s acquisition by American Tower.
Cell C: South African operator who monetised their towers back in 2010 with a sale to American Tower. Cell C maximised upfront capital in their deal with the towerco in order to raise capital for rollout and to grab market share, but in doing so agreed a high leaseback rate which the company has been unhappy with. The operators has shut down its network and is now roaming on MTN’s network, but still own 700 towers. Cell C were one of the many buyers of a recent spectrum auction in South Africa, with the country pushing 5G network rollout.
Citi: One of the world’s leading tower transaction advisory groups can be found in the TMT team at Citi.
Coast to Coast: One of South Africa’s smaller independent towercos with a portfolio of 40 towers.
Comco: Small South African towerco.
Communication Towers Nigeria: Nigerian towerco which claims to have 500 cell sites across all 36 states.
Connect Africa: Company focussed on bringing connectivity to rural areas in Africa, successfully piloting rural service deliver models in Zambia and South Africa. These base stations costs less than $10,000 and are partly funded by advertising. Connect Africa has over 200 sites deployed successfully with three operators.
Convergence Partners: Firm focussed on early-stage investments in the African TMT sector. Had looked at an investment in the tower industry a few years ago.
CREI: ieng Group’s ESCO business unit.
CSquared: Pan-African fibreco with a footprint in Uganda, Ghana, Kenya and Liberia.
Dark Fibre Africa: South African open access fibreco in which Remgro are majority shareholders. Have an interest in exploring new business models with towercos.
Delta Partners: Leading TMT consultant and investment advisory company with extensive global expertise in the tower industry.
Development Partners International: Private equity fund focussed on Africa which had money at work in Eaton Towers prior to their sale to American Tower.
DFC: US International Development Finance Corporation is America’s development bank, partnering with the private sector to finance solutions in the developing world. The DFC was formed following the merger of Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) with the Development Credit Authority of the United States Agency for International Development. OPIC supported IHS and Helios Towers in Africa and also financed Apollo Towers in Myanmar, being the first U.S. institution to invest in the country. In 2019 they approved a $US26mn allocation to support BTS expansion across Peru and Ecuador.
Digital Bridge (formerly Digital Colony): Digital Bridge is a global digital infrastructure investment firm managing nearly $47bn with investments in cell towers, data centres, fibre, small cells and edge infrastructure. The firm went through a large rebranding in 2021 with the corporate name changing to DigitalBridge Group and Digital Colony, the digital infrastructure investment platform, changed to operate under the DigitalBridge brand.
Distributed Power Africa: Econet’s in-house ESCO which is also offering solar power solutions to sectors beyond telecoms. Distributed Power Africa currently has 1,500 sites under ESCO management in Zimbabwe.
Eastcastle Infrastructure: Established by the ex-team of Eaton Towers who are pioneers of the African Tower sector, Eaton sold their entire tower portfolio to American Towers. Now operating as Eastcastle, the team have established a new presence in Ivory Coast, the DRC and Nigeria although they have not yet disclosed tower counts.
Eaton Towers: Towerco which had built a portfolio of over 5,000 sites across Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Niger, Uganda and South Africa. In 2016, Eaton reached a deal to sell its South African business to American Tower, and then in 2019, American Tower acquired the rest of Eaton’s operations.
Econet: Major TMT conglomerate which is Zimbabwe’s largest operator, with a footprint also in Burundi and Lesotho. The company had considered the formation of an internal towerco, although plans are yet to move forward. Econet has its own in-house ESCO, Distributed Power Africa, which not only intends to supply power to their towers but is also providing solar power to other commercial and industrial sectors in Zimbabwe. Econet is also the parent company of pan-African fibreco Liquid Telecom.
Eighty Four Dynamics: Zimbabwean towerco whose sister company has over eight years experience constructing tower sites for the major operators in Zimbabwe. Regulatory and economic issues has prevented expansion.
Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund (EAIF): Development finance agency for the EU which is interested in the towerco and telecom ESCO space.
Emerging Capital Partners: Private equity fund focussed on Africa and investors in IHS Towers.
EnergyOn: Launched by South African towerco WIRUlink in response to the country’s declining energy grid, EnergyOn is a new ESCO provding renewable energy power solutions.
Energy Vision: Pioneers of the ESCO model in sub-Saharan Africa, having signed the continent’s first ESCO contract of scale with Airtel Gabon, based on a fixed energy business model with a nine year term. Energy Vision has now taken on all 280 allocated sites in Gabon, successfully delivering against a 99.99% uptime service level agreement (12 month average). The company has also been awarded responsibility for management of all passive elements of the sites including towers, fences and structures. Energy Vision is technology agnostic with an appetite for further ESCO projects on the continent and now has a presence in Nigeria.
ESCOTEL: A new player to the African power market, ESCOTEL is the product of three investors including investment consultancy Inspired Evolution, Norwegian government private equity firm Norfund, and technology company Sagemcom. ESCOTEL have a contract with Orange operating 900 sites in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and the DRC.
Ethio Telecom: Ethiopia’s state-owned telecoms operator, Ethio Telecom has enjoyed a monopoly over the country although the delayed arrival of Safaricom brings much needed competition into the market. Ethiotel is positioning itself as an infrastructure provider in the country and has managed to protect its market position by lobbying against the government issuing towerco licenses to potential competitors. Although Ethiotel has backtracked on a potential tower carve-out or sale-leaseback, their 1,000+ site ESCO RFP is still live.
Ethos Private Equity: Private equity firm which had money at work in Eaton Towers prior to the towerco being sold to American Tower.
Expresso Telecom: Tier two MNO Expresso with a footprint in Sudan, Ghana, Guinea, Mauritania and Senegal. Expresso agreed their first tower sale with Al Karama Towers in Senegal announcing a SLB their 625 towers.
FMO: Dutch development bank which is 51% government owned and 49% owned by commercial banks and financial institutions. FMO is a former investor in IHS Towers and has arranged a subordinated loan of US$13mn to Irrawaddy Green Towers in Myanmar via its Infrastructure Development Fund.
Frogfoot: South African licensed open access fibre network provider in (funded by Rand Merchant Bank, Investec and Metier Capital) which has signed a partnership agreement with American Tower in the country.
Gabon Telecom: See Maroc Telecom.
Globacom: Operator with a footprint in Nigeria, Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire which has shied away from infrastructure sharing and tower deals despite the presence of towercos in its home markets.
Gyro Towers: South African MNO Telkom’s carve out towerco which owns a portfolio of 6,500 sites. 3,700 towers have been carved out into Swiftnet, which may soon IPO. A further 2,500 towers have been labelled “unproductive” and will require decommissioning.
Hardiman Telecommunications: A unique consultancy equally capable advising on engineering and operational issues as they are on commercial strategy and corporate finance. Extensive experience advising on both the buy-side and sell-side in tower transactions.
Helios Investment Partners: Investment firm making private equity investments in Africa, with a primary focus on the sub-Saharan region. Helios’ portfolio companies operate in 35 African countries across a range of industry sectors, with telecom infrastructure and services playing an important part. Founder investors in Helios Towers, having since exited their investment following Helios’ IPO, and previous investors in HTN Towers prior to the towerco’s sale to IHS.
Helios Towers: Africa’s third largest towerco, the company completed its first major tower transaction in 2010, acquiring 750 towers from Tigo in Ghana and have since completed seven further major tower transactions establishing a footprint in South Africa, Congo Brazzaville, Tanzania, the DRC and Senegal. Most recently, Helios acquired a large portfolio of sites from Airtel in Malawi and Madagascar, with a deal in Gabon expected to close shortly. The company now owns a total of 10,511 towers across eight countries, with build-to-suit towers and smaller bolt-on acquisitions constantly adding to this count. Most recently, Helios is in the process of acquiring Oman Towers’ portfolio, a landmark occasion that takes Helios outside the African market for the first time. In 2019 the company completed its IPO process and is now publicly listed.
Figure 4: A history of Helios Towers' major tower transactions
Figure 5: Helios Towers' African portfolio
Horizon Equity Partners: South African Horizon Equity Partners formed part of a consortium which owned 75% of Altice’s Portuguese tower carve out, OMTEL, prior to OMTEL being sold to Cellnex.
Hotspot Network: Nigerian towerco which built a network of 160 sites through build to suit contracts with Airtel and Etisalat. The towerco recently sold 85 of its towers to IHS back in 2016, but is now sitting at around 100 sites.The towerco has also expanded into rural connectivity, building its own radio sites on a revenue share basis with MTN Nigeria.
HTN Towers: One of the first towercos in Africa, HTN Towers (formerly Helios Towers Nigeria) built a portfolio of 1,211 towers in Nigeria before being acquired by IHS Towers in 2016. HTN Towers also signed a management with license to lease contract with SWAP Telecoms & Technologies which was transferred to IHS upon IHS’ acquisition of the towerco. The contract is understood to have since been cancelled.
IHS Towers: Towerco with the largest African portfolio, totalling 30,487 towers across South Africa, Cote d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Zambia, Rwanda and Nigeria, with over 50% of its towers in the latter. The towerco has completed transactions with Airtel (Rwanda & Zambia), Etisalat (Nigeria), Orange (MLL arrangement in Cameroon and Cote d’Ivoire) and MTN (in all five countries); in 2016 IHS also acquired rival Nigerian towerco HTN Towers and their 1,211 sites. Most recently, IHS acquired MTN’s 5,701 tower portfolio in South Africa, including an ESCO contract to provide power to all sites MTN is active on in the country. Outside Africa, the company also has a presence in Kuwait, Brazil, Colombia, and Peru taking its total global tower count to 38,976 sites. IHS Towers launched an IPO in October 2021.
Figure 6: A history of IHS Towers' major tower transactions in Africa
Figure 7: IHS Towers' African tower portfolio
Infratel: Government-backed infraco in Zambia with 1,253 towers. It also managed fixed line and datacentres in the country.
International Finance Corporation (IFC): The IFC is a member of the World Bank Group, the world’s leading DFI. The IFC has invested around half a billion dollars in debt and equity into eight towercos across emerging markets and is an investor in IHS.
International Tower Corporation: Part of Proef Group, South African towerco which is working with Cell C to rebuild their tower portfolio under a build-operate-transfer model, owns 61 towers in the country.
Intrepid Advisory Partners: Advisory firm established by Daniel Lee which advised on 11 of the first 13 tower deals to close in Africa.
IPT PowerTech: Telecom ESCO which participated in IHS’ ‘Big Five’ project in Nigeria and recently signed an ESCO contract with Orange in Guinea. IPT has over 10,000 sites under management with further deals are expected from this ambitious ESCO.
Lap GreenN: Operator who has tried to monetise towers in Uganda but has been hindered by trading restrictions placed on the Libyan owned parent. The company also has a presence in Sierra Leone and South Sudan.
Lion's Head Global Partners: Debt backers of ESCOs in Africa. Provided debt financing to Camusat and ESCOTEL in West Africa.
Liquid Telecom: Pan-African fibreco which is part of the Econet Group, with 18,000km of fibre across Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, DRC, Lesotho, and South Africa. Liquid Telecom also owns Africa Data Centres which has data centres in South Africa and Kenya.
Lone Star Tower: An independent towerco in South Africa with 130 towers.
Macquarie Group: Serial towerco investors, Macquarie has an extensive tower portfolio around the world including PhilTower Consortium in the Philippines, Mexico Tower Partners in Mexico, Towercom in Slovakia, and UK broadcast towerco Arqiva whose telecoms division has been sold to Cellnex. Former towerco investments include Viom Networks and ATC India, Ceské Radiokomunikace and Russian Towers.
Maroc Telecom: Moroccan headquartered MNO in which Etisalat has a 53% stake. Has expressed little interest in divesting their towers to date and remains conservative in regards to infrastructure sharing. In addition to their presence in Morocco, Maroc Telecom has strong West African presence, having opcos in nine African countries where it operates under the brands Moov (Benin, Central African Republic, Cote d’Ivoire, Niger, Togo), Onatel (Burkina Faso) Sotelma (Mali) Mauritel (Mauritania) and Gabon Telecom (Gabon).
Mauritel: See Maroc Telecom.
Metier: Investor in rural solutions. Led a US$36mn consortium to an equity investment into Africa Mobile Networks.
Millicom/ Tigo: Millicom undertook the first pioneering tower transactions with Helios Towers in Ghana, DRC and Tanzania from 2010-11, but the group hasn’t done a SSA tower deal since. Millicom has recently completed its multi-year Africa exist to focus solely on their Latin American market. The string of sales include its 24% stake it acquired in Helios Towers, Senegal operations to a consortium involving NJJ, Sofima and Teyliom Group, Rwanda operations to Airtel, Chad operations to Maroc Telecom, and their Ghana operations merged with Airtel. Their exit completed with a final transaction of their Tanzanian operations to a consortium lead by Axian Group.
Figure 8: Millicom/Tigo's footprint of opco sales
Minara Towers: see SBA Communications
Moov: See Maroc Telecom.
MTN: MTN, with a presence in 17 African countries, has monetised their towers in seven – representing the majority of their most attractive portfolios. The company has raised around US$2.5bn to date and retained equity in selected markets. MTN commenced their passive infrastructure monetisation strategy in 2010-11 with the formation of joint venture towercos with American Tower in Ghana and Uganda, in which MTN retained 49% equity (with American Tower having since bought out MTN’s stake). This was then followed up with sale and leasebacks of 100% of the equity in their towers in Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Rwanda and Zambia – this time with IHS as the counterparty. In Nigeria, MTN formed a joint venture with IHS in which it retained a non-controlling 51% stake. In February 2017, MTN exchanged its 51% stake in the joint venture for additional shareholding at IHS group level, taking its equity stake in IHS Holdings from 15% to 29% and simplifying its ownership structure in the process.
Figure 9: MTN's history of tower sales
MTN’s most significant portfolio they retain in Africa is South Africa where in May it finalised their sale of 5,701 towers to IHS Towers including an ESCO contract to provide power to all sites MTN are present on in the country. Beyond this, MTN’s smaller portfolios are yet to attract the interest of towercos and the operator is reportedly considering the ESCO model in such markets to rid themselves of the main operational complexity of managing the towers.
NEC XON: a combination of two companies, NEC corporation with a long history in African telecoms who acquired XON, NEC XON is a systems integrator that provides energy solutions and ESCO services for towercos and MNOs. Working with IHS Towers in Nigeria.
NuRAN Wireless: a Canadian rural specialist providing network coverage in remote areas. NuRAN entered Cameroon in September 2021 in a deal with Orange to deploy 242 rural OpenRan sites, with 50 sites live so far. Working with NETIS and Clear Blue Technologies, NuRAN sites are solar and battery powered but not shareable. In the DRC, NuRAN has 29 live sites and looking to roll out 2,000 on a sole-tenanct basis. MTN has signed an agreement with NuRAN in Namibia to deliver 150 rural sites within the next two years. Between DRC and Cameroon, the rural specialist estimates that they will have deployed around 10,000 sites.
Onatel: See Maroc Telecom.
Orange: Orange has a presence in 14 Sub-Saharan African markets but has only entered into tower deals in three, signing an MLL arrangement with IHS Towers in Cameroon and Cote d’Ivoire and selling 300 towers to Eaton in Uganda (before then selling their opco to Africell). With towercos present however in a total of six of their markets, Orange does lease space from independent towercos, whilst also sharing sites with operators.
Figure 10: Orange's tower ownership and ESCO contracts in Africa
Orange has been a pioneer of the ESCO model in Sub-Saharan Africa and has signed contracts in the DRC (with GreenWish Partners and Sagemcom as their operational partner), in Niger, Cote d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso (with Camusat’s Aktivco) and in Guinea Conakry (with IPT PowerTech). The operator has also confirmed that it has issued ESCO RFPs in Madagascar, Egypt, Mali, Liberia, Cameroon and Central African Republic.
Pan African Towers: Towerco with 1,000 sites in Nigeria and 300 in Ghana with ambitious new build strategy planned. The company’s business model is predicated on leases being denominated in local currency. Pan African Towers is working with an ESCO partner to switch away from diesel.
Paradigm Infrastructure: Despite being a new entry to the market, Paradigm has plenty of experience being run by ex-American Tower EMEA executives. Paradigm signed its first acquisition in a joint venture with SBA Communications for Airtel’s 1,400 towers in Tanzania for $175mn, now operating under the name Minara Towers. The Paradigm team are responsible for running the tower portfolio, including providing power. Paradigm is reportedly looking at a potential entry into the Kenyan market.
PowerCom: PowerCom, owned by MNO Telecom Namibia, is Namibia’s first dedicated infrastructure player. Managing a portfolio of 281 towers.
Pro High Site Communications: South African towerco with a portfolio of 11 towers.
Pula Towers: Botswana’s first towerco which has a focus on both macro towers and in building solutions.
RIT Capital Partners: Chaired by Lord Rothschild, RIT Capital Partners is an investment trust, listed on the London Stock Exchange with a widely diversified portfolio, including an investment in Helios Towers.
Safaricom: Kenyan MNO, possessing Vodacom as a shareholder (35%), dominates the Kenyan mobile market. While the company considers its towers too strategic to sell, Safaricom has for some time been swapping or leasing their tower portfolio, by far Kenya’s largest and most extensive, to MNOs and other tenants. The company has recently begun offering power as a service to its tenants. Safaricom has also launched operations in Ethiopia to challenge state-owned incumbent Ethio Telecom but failed to launch in April and has yet to begin operations, setting August as their start date.
SBA Communications: A major international towerco based in the USA, SBA Communications have a total of 34,565 sites, mostly across its 16 markets throughout the Americas. SBA entered the African market acquiring Atlas Tower’s 900 sites in South Africa which was rebranded to SBA South Africa in October 2021, which has since expanded to 1,382 towers. Then in 2022 SBA acquired Airtel’s 1,400 sites in Tanzania in a joint venture with Paradigm Infrastructure, operating under the name Minara Towers.
SBA South Africa: See SBA Communications
SEAL Towers: Start-up Kenyan towerco focussed on low-cost compact tower site solutions and hybrid power innovations.
Secured Towers: An independent towerco in Nigeria which claims to own 600 site in secure compounds.
SENTECH: South African broadcast towerco with a portfolio of 340 sites.
Sky Coverage: South African towerco with an undisclosed tower count.
Smile: LTE pioneer, Smile, with a presence in major cities in the DRC, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda rely primarily on co-location on third party towers in order to rollout their network.
Sonatel: See Orange.
Soros: Quantum Strategic Partners (QSP) is a private investment vehicle, managed by Soros Fund Management LLC. QSP focuses globally on investments in several strategies, including capital-intensive start-ups, buyouts, and growth equity transactions. Investors in Helios Towers, the private equity team spun out into Newlight Partners who own a 15% stake in Helios.
Sotelma: See Maroc Telecom.
SWAP Telecoms & Technologies: Another claimant to the title of Africa’s first towerco, Nigerian towerco SWAP acquired the towers of Multilinks’ CDMA competitor Starcomms back in 2010. After the loss of their anchor tenant, SWAP struggled to generate revenues and after speculation over a merger between competitor towerco, HTN Towers and SWAP, the two reached an agreement whereby HTN would manage, market and lease space on the SWAP towers. This agreement was passed on to IHS Towers following their acquisition of HTN Towers, with 368 of their 702 understood to be live. It has been reported that IHS has since given notice to tenants on a number of SWAP towers with a view to decommissioning sites and moving tenants onto existing IHS owned sites. Since then Pan African Towers have taken over 300 SWAP towers on a MLL basis.
Telkom Kenya: The Kenyan operator sold 723 towers to American Tower having previously entered into a management with license to lease agreement with Eaton Towers back in 2013, only for the deal to be cancelled nine months later. In February 2019 it was announced that third placed Telkom Kenya was to merge with second place Kenyan operator, Airtel to create a sizeable competitor to market leaders Safaricom. In August 2020, it was reported that the merger was off.
Telkom South Africa: South African MNO with a 15% mobile market share in the country (Q3, 2021). Telkom had an on/off tower sale but in 2017 announced the formation of their own towerco which is now called Swiftnet to maximise the profitability of their sites. In 2022 it was reported that MTN Group were exploring an acquisition of Telkom South Africa.
Thabure: An independent towerco in South Africa with 117 towers.
Tigo: See Millicom.
Tilmann Global Holdings: Investor with broad appetite for towerco investments anywhere from early-stage opportunities, where the company has been involved in build to suit programs with Eaton Towers in Africa (prior to Eaton’s acquisition by American Tower) and Apollo Towers in Myanmar, to sale and leasebacks in mature markets of thousands of sites.
TMCEL: Mozambican state-owned telco formed by the merger of fixed-line TDM and MNO mCel. mCel had previously appointed Barclays to oversee a sale of its ~1,000 towers in a bid to reduce debt but the deal stalled following limited interest from towercos.
TowerCo of Africa: a carve-out of Axian Telecom, TowerCo of Africa has two subsidiaries, TowerCo of Madagascar which has a portfolio of 1,563 towers and is one of two towercos in the country alongside Helios Towers, and TowerCo of Uganda (Ubuntu Towers) with 170 in Uganda. Axian Telecom has plans to carve out more of its tower portfolio to TowerCo of Africa including 1,000 sites in Togo and 400 in Tanzania, bringing the towerco’s total count to 3,133 and becoming the 5th largest in Africa.
Unitel: Largest of Angola’s MNOs with two thirds of the market share in the country and a portfolio of 1,800 sites.
Vanu: A rural specialist providing rural new builds on a revenue-share model, Vanu offers operators affordable coverage solutions in off-grid markets. Vanu first entered the African market in 2016 deploying a solar network in Rwanda, followed by a contract with Africa Mobile Networks to expand off-grid villages in 2019, and works with MTN to provide OpenRan communication Systems for off-grid communities. Vanu is setting up in Zambia to add new revenue share sites for MTN and has built 400 new sites in Rwanda.
Viettel: Once Africa’s most aggressive new entrant, Vietnamese military backed Viettel had initially seemed reluctant to accelerate time to market by leveraging co-location. Viettel operate in Cameroon under Nexttel with 1,627 sites, and in Mozambique under Movitel with 1,800 sites, and in Tanzania under Halotel with 1,500 sites. Viettel have co-location agreements with IHS Towers in Cameroon and Helios Towers in Tanzania, the latter of whom attracted ~1,000 co-locations.
Vodacom: Multinational MNO with a presence in South Africa, Ghana, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique and Lesotho and a controlling stake in Safaricom in Kenya. Apart from an early ‘manage with license to lease’ (MLL) deal in Ghana with Eaton Towers (transferred to American Tower following American Tower’s acquisition of Eaton) and the sale of 1,149 Tanzanian towers to Helios Towers Africa in 2013 (where Vodacom acquired a 24.5% stake in Helios Towers Tanzania, a stake which Helios has since purchased), Vodacom consider their tower assets too strategic to divest. However, like in Europe where Vodacom’s parent company Vodafone has created their own towerco, Vantage Towers, Vodacom has plans to potentially carve out its African tower portfolio into another towerco. Both Vodacom South Africa and Safaricom run in-house towercos, actively pursuing co-locations on their existing sites.
Voltalia: Major energy player offering an ESCO solution to the telecom sector. Voltalia has signed an ESCO contract with Myanmar towerco, MNTI and has an appetite for projects in the African market.
Vulatel: South African fibreco which has a partnership agreement with Helios Towers.
WAIZAR: A small independent towerco in South Africa with 12 towers
Wendel: Family fund, leading investor in IHS Towers.
WIRUlink: A fast-growing towerco in South Africa, WIRUlink have rapidly expanded to 119 sites with a large pipeline of BTS and small-scale acquisitions planned. WIRUlink have also launched an ESCO in South Africa called EnergyOn due to the declining state of the country’s national grid, with plans to expand their power service to other towercos in the country.
Are we missing anyone?
While we have made every best effort to include all the key players - if you think you should be included on this list or if you spot anyone missing please email Christopher Greaves, TowerXchange's Africa & Middle East Researcher, at christopher.greaves@towerxchange.com
Interesting in networking with the Who's Who?
On 11-12th October the management team of Africa's towercos will join MNO tower strategists, industry investors and the industry supply chain at the 10th Annual TowerXchange Africa Meetup. Taking place in Johannesburg, the Meetup brings together the top 300 most influential stakeholders in the sector. To find out more and to register to join us, visit https://meetup.towerxchange.com/africa
