Kuwait-based telecom company Zain Group has announced its intentions to sell off its African mobile networks. No reason was given for why Zain is looking to sell the African division.
Reports say the group is hoping to get a handsome sum of $12 billion from an unnamed French prospective buyer.
It is not yet clear how the sale will affect Zain Nigeria’s operation, which this week outsourced a major part of its service operations to mobile giant Ericcson. If the French deal succeeds, the group is set for yet another name change.
However, Zain spokesperson, Emeka Oparah, in a telephone interview with NEXT said: “I am not aware of the development. I only saw it as an alert from Google today, so I cannot say anything on it right now. Hopefully by tomorrow morning more information will start flowing on it.”
The sale of the former Celtel’s assets is estimated to be worth up to $12 billion, including debt, reports the Dow Jones Newswire, citing the Al Qabas newspaper.
Celtel was founded by Sudanese-born, Mo Ibrahim, in 1998 and sold to Kuwait’s MTC (now Zain) in April 2005 for $3.4 billion.
The Zain Group is waiting for a reply from the French company this week and if the deal isn’t settled, Zain will study bids made by other companies in India and China, as the deal will inject ample cash liquidity into company.
Zain Nigeria, formerly known as Celtel Nigeria, was established in 2000 as Econet Wireless, by a group of institutional and private investors as well as three state governments: Lagos, Delta, and Akwa Ibom States.
Prior to its change of name to Celtel, the company was known as VMobile Nigeria owned by Vee Networks Limited.
In 2006, following Celtel International’s acquisition of majority stake in the company, it was re-branded Celtel and became an important part of Celtel’s pan-African operations spanning 14 countries.
Celtel Nigeria was rebranded Zain Nigeria on August 1, 2008, following the global acquisition of Celtel International by MTC Group, which transformed to Zain Group, a leading emerging markets player in the field of telecommunications, aiming to become one of the top ten mobile groups in the world by 2011.
It made history on August 5, 2001 by becoming the first telecoms operator to launch commercial GSM services in Nigeria.
