South African telecoms group MTN has signed a deal with tower company IHS to sell its sites portfolio in Rwanda and Zambia, as part of its “asset optimisation strategy”.
A total of 1,228 mobile network towers will be sold, including 524 in Rwanda…
South African telecoms group MTN has signed a deal with tower company IHS to sell its sites portfolio in Rwanda and Zambia, as part of its “asset optimisation strategy”.
A total of 1,228 mobile network towers will be sold, including 524 in Rwanda and 704 in Zambia. The deal value is understood to be around the US$120m mark.
MTN has a long-standing relationship with IHS and previously sold close to 1,800 in Cameroon and Cote d’Ivoire to the towerco.
Sifiso Dabengwa, CEO of MTN Group, said in a statement: “In addition to unlocking value in our passive infrastructure, we remain cognisant of the need to contain and efficiently manage our cost structures across the group as our markets mature and become more competitive.”
Under the agreement, MTN Rwanda and MTN Zambia will become anchor tenants on the towers for an initial term of 10 years. IHS will also promote tower sharing and colocation on these sites.
Following these two transactions, which are expected to close independently during the first half of 2014, the towerco said it will own 10,500 towers in Africa. IHS was advised by EY while MTN mandated Citi, TelecomFinance has learnt.
Separately, IHS is understood to be among the parties interested in buying towers from Indian giant Bharti Airtel. The latter’s 15,000 site portfolio on the African continent has been valued at around US$1.8bn-US$2bn.
And earlier this year, the tower company agreed a leasing deal for 2,000 towers belonging to Orange, also in Cote d’Ivoire and Cameroon.
The African tower market is currently experiencing a flurry of activity with several operators in the process of offloading their sites to the continent’s four main towercos: IHS, Helios, Eaton and American Tower.
