MTN Group to Re-Apply for Ethiopian Telcom Licence

Africa’s largest telco, MTN has expressed its commitment to re-apply for a telecom licence at Africa’s second-most populous country, Ethiopia, after a failed attempt by the telco giant and its consortium.

The move follows the announcement of a consortium led by Vodafone and Kenya-based telco, Safaricom as the preferred bidder after a competitive process involving MTN, Africa’s leading telco and other bidders.

In a statement concluding the lengthy process of opening up the country’s telecoms market, the Ethiopian Communications Authority (ECA) and The Ministry of Finance confirmed Global Partnership for Ethiopia consortium had been successful in its bid.

As part of its bid the consortium pledged to spend $8 billion on the operation over the next ten years.

Meanwhile, Africa’s largest telecoms firm, MTN, has said that it was considering having another goal at becoming a mobile operator in Ethiopia after losing to Kenya’s Safaricom, the group said in a recent statement

MTN’s Chief Executive, Ralph Mupita told shareholders during the company’s 26th annual general meeting (AGM) held virtually recently that MTN would apply its mind should the Ethiopian government reissue the license.

“There are views that the Ethiopian authorities will reissue the license with mobile money, and if they do that in a relatively short period of time, we will apply our minds on the issue, we have not made a firm decision on that,”Mupita said.

Mupita noted that while MTN was saddened at not being named winning bidder, the group remained comfortable with its bid.

“We took an approach that the opportunity, as strategic as it was, needed to meet our capital allocation framework and the hurdles that we saw given the license conditions. We were particularly focused on the lack of mobile money in the license regime, and there were some issues around how the telcos constructs would be accommodated within Ethiopia.

“We certainly priced for those things and near-term risks that we saw, and we felt that the financial bid there was appropriate,” Mupita said.