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$25 mln East Africa media and telecoms deal

  1. Posted on Thursday 24 September 2009 - 18:00
    Tom Minney
    Image of Tom Minney
    Emerging Capital Partners (ECP) announced on 22 September it has committed $25 million to Wananchi Group Holdings (www.wananchi.com), a leading East African media and telecommunications company specializing in pay television and high-speed Internet services in Kenya and Tanzania, according to www.africancapitalmarketsnews.com.
    ECP is an international private equity firm focused on investing across Africa and this is its 10th investment in African telecoms. It still has stakes in Zain Gabon, MTN Cote d'Ivoire and Cellcom (GSM operator in Liberia and Guinea).
    The equity investment will help upgrade and expand Wananchi’s existing network infrastructure to provide East Africa's first triple-play service, consisting of digital pay television, high-speed Internet and Voice-Over-IP services.
    ECP’s CEO Tom Gibian says, according to the website (www.ecpinvestments.com) "ECP has been active in the African telecom sector for nearly a decade. Following on the tremendous growth in African mobile penetration over the last 10 years, we view broadband and related services as the next “game changer” in African telecom. Wananchi's product offering, network infrastructure and strong management are ideally suited to address the significant unmet demand for media and broadband services in East Africa." So called “triple play” has been a major driver for growth of telecom companies in developed and emerging markets for the past decade.
    Wananchi serves retail and corporate markets in Kenya and Tanzania through its consumer and corporate divisions. The consumer division operates the Zuku brand and provides cable television and broadband Internet services to residential customers in Kenya using a combination of hybrid-fiber-coaxial and WiMax technologies. The corporate division operates under the SimbaNET brand and is a leading provider of Internet and virtual private network services to corporations, local governments and non-governmental organizations in Kenya and Tanzania using a combination of metro-fiber, WiMax and VSAT technologies.

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