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African Telecoms Investment - February 2012

Lots of conversation but little action would be how I'd characterise the African telecoms investment landscape in February.

$200Mn of fresh investments were announced, but although some big deals were mooted - particularly a sell off of tower assets by Etisalat - none materialised, leaving only Vodacom's mobile upgrades in Tanzania and Movicel's selection of Huawei and ZTE to build a small LTE network in Angola to prop up the numbers.

Perhaps this shouldn't come as a surprise. Only $215Mn of investments were announced in the same month of 2011; suggesting that the $516Mn announced in February 2010 was a bit of an aberration.

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