Is Bharti Airtel’s Zain Deal Good For Africa? Maybe Not

Kato Mivule | February 16, 2010

Bharti is positioned to take over Zain assets in Africa and that includes operations in Uganda. However, Bharti failed at gaining access to Africa’s Telecom Boom by taking over MTN assets in Africa. Bharti then is reported to have borrowed money to secure the Zain assets in Africa. The translation of this is might mean restructuring and more of a profit driven ideology that might sacrifice employees and African indigenous talent in the short term. Yet still Bharti Airtel will bring with it innovation in the area of mobile applications and probably move Africa towards fully utilizing “Africa’s new PC”, as one blogger refereed to the mobile phone phenomenon in Africa.

Bharti AirTel Logo

Zain Sees $5 Billion Profit From Africa Unit Sale | Businessweek
Feb. 16 (Bloomberg) — Zain, Kuwait’s biggest phone company, said it expects a return of as much as $5 billion from selling most of its African operations to Bharti Airtel Ltd. in a deal that would almost halve its assets…Bharti, South Asia’s biggest mobile-phone company, and Zain said yesterday they entered into exclusive talks under which the Indian company would buy the African assets for $10.7 billion. Bharti will pay $10 billion when the deal is completed and the rest a year later, Zain said in a statement on the Kuwait Stock Exchange Web site today. The transaction excludes Zain’s operations in Sudan and Morocco….Bharti is seeking Zain’s African business for access to an estimated 42 million customers across 15 African countries from Nigeria to Uganda. Bharti’s third attempt to enter Africa highlights billionaire Chairman Sunil Mittal’s ambitions to expand overseas as competition intensifies at home, where call rates have fallen to less than a penny a minute. Mittal has tried to gain access to other fast-growing markets, including a second failed attempt last year to buy South Africa’s MTN Group Ltd. for about $23 billion.

Zain Logo

Bharti eyes debt financing for Zain Africa buy – sources | Money Control
Bharti Airtel, which has offered USD 10.7 billion for Kuwaiti telecom Zain’s African assets, is likely to finance the majority of the deal’s purchase price with foreign currency loans, three people familiar with the matter said…Zain, which is selling its telecoms operations in 15 African countries to Bharti, said on Tuesday the deal included USD10 billion to be paid at completion and the remaining USD 700 million by the end of the year…Separately, the NDTV Profit television channel said Bharti was considering a rights issue to help fund the deal. However, at the time of its ultimately thwarted merger talks with South Africa’s MTN Group last year, Bharti had said there was no plan for any rights issue. A Bharti Airtel spokesman declined to comment on Tuesday on how the firm would fund the deal. Standard Chartered and Barclays are advising Bharti Airtel on the merger and its funding, one of the sources told Reuters.