With the successful acquisition of Zain's Africa operations, Bharti Airtel is now the fifth largest mobile company in the world with over 180 million customers.
Bharti Airtel plans to invest US$150 million to expand its network, improve on its IT infrastructure and grow its product portfolio in Kenya.
Laying out the company’s strategy for the Kenyan market, Manoj Kohli, CEO (International) and Joint MD Bharti Airtel said the company was committed to the growth of the telecommunications sector in the country by offering affordable services, deep network coverage and improved distribution channels.
Kohli said the company’s focus in Kenya would be expanding to rural Kenya, with the aim of empowering farmers who hold the country’s backbone through agriculture. Citing a project in India where Bharti Airtel joined hands with a fertilizer company to pass better farming methods to farmers, Kohli said they would rollout to rural Kenya with the promise of value addition to farmers through the network.
The MD also termed infrastructure sharing as one of the strategies they intend to use in their expansion plans as well as in rolling out their data services for it would cut on their expansion costs hence passing on the benefits to customers via affordable calling rates. Infrastructure sharing has for long been a thorny issue in the Kenyan mobile telephony arena with operators reluctant to share infrastructure with competitors.
And with the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) sanctioning the mobile number portability usage by operators, Kohli lauded the move saying that this would help in their growth strategy since competition would now focus on services offered and network strength. With the successful acquisition of Zain’s Africa operations, Bharti Airtel is now the fifth largest mobile company in the world with over 180 million customers. Of the 16 operations in Africa, Bharti is the market leader in 10, second in four and is ranked fourth in Ghana.
