Versatile Amphibian

August was a relatively slow month in African telecoms investment, with $428Mn of new money committed to upgrades. 3 of the big 4 markets took new investments, with only South Africa announcement-free. Non-M&A investments for the year now stand at a touch under $8.5Bn, on track for my forecast for the year of $13.5Mn. For reference, investments announced in August 2011 totalled nearly $1.9Bn, driven by massive commitments in Nigeria and South Africa. 2010 netted a more subdued $80Mn and August 2009 yielded $300Mn. In truth, there's little of major import to report as this month's two most interesting announcements have yet to mature into concrete commitments. In Morocco, the goverment unveiled its 10 year plan to modernise the country's obselete broadband market. This exciting plan includes a national fibre backbone in combination with DSL and LTE last miles to bring developed market connectivity to 32 million people. In South Africa, MTN is looking at selling...

I've completed my analysis of the trends in African telecoms for the first half of the year and thereby amended my forecast for the remainder of 2012. Overall, investment was up 54% over the same period last year, however it remains 33% down on H1 2010. As the table shows, much of this decline is due to the destabilising effects of the Arab Spring, which has almost completely halted investment in North Africa. In 2010 and 2009 countries in this region accounted for a third of all investment in the continent. In 2011 they represented 3% of the total and are on track to be the same this year. Overall only Central African countries are likely to show an uptick in investment from 2010, driven by the nascent emergence of the continent's third most populous country - the DRC - and coincident investment by telecoms groups who are keen to find a non-Nigerian market to focus on. The market I'm most worried about is Kenya, so long a leader in digital Africa, but now, t...

I’m firmly of the belief that participants in the TMT industry need to read widely in order to understand the present and future dynamics of the market. To that end, this post is a collection of the articles that have caught my eye. This week – businesses binge on social, Google gets it wrong in Kenya, CES points to everything going wireless in 2013 and my ultimate home goes on sale. Digital media I’ve always thought that companies having social network accounts is a bit like expecting consumers to talk to a building. In my mind, it is much better to expose individuals within the organisation, so customers can talk to a real person. Anyway, this research just shows the level of experimentation major brands are undertaking in social – not much in comparison to their overall PR spend. http://www.marketingcharts.com/direct/enterprise-companies-overload-on-social-media-average-178-accounts-20608/altimeter-corporate-owned-social-media-accounts2-jan12gif/ New business models Google has a num...

Although Nigeria and South Africa received by far the largest share of the $10.2Bn of investments in African telecoms infrastructure announced in 2011, the biggest winners were citizens of Zimbabwe. In absolute terms, Nigeria ($3.3Bn) and South Africa ($1.8Bn), represent 50% of the total investment, but at $54 per person, Zimbabweans benefited from more than twice as much investment per person as Nigerians ($21) or South Africans ($37.50) and received more than double the continental average ($24). Much of the new $700Mn going into Zimbabwean telecoms was spent on mobile data services, either direct to modem or to 3G handsets, taking advantage of new sub-sea bandwidth - such as that provided by SEACOM - to provide Internet connectivity to consumers. Zimbabwe, it must also be remembered, has been a significant beneficiary of Chinese investment dollars for all manner of infrastructure projects. Worst off of the large nations were citizens of the Democratic Republic of Congo ($2.75), whic...

I’m writing this post in the departure lounge at Nairobi airport, having spent most of this week in the city meeting various TMT companies. It’s been an eye opening few days, so I thought it’d be worth sharing a few experiences. The challenge that sub-Saharan Africa faces with infrastructure is apparent the moment you step out of Nairobi’s slightly ramshackle airport and into one of the ubiquitous vans, which almost instantaneously becomes another crawling, hooting part of Nairobi’s quite astounding “traffic”. Traffic is a word that comes up in pretty much every conversation. Kenya has only one major road, which links it to Uganda to the east and Tanzania in the south; teeming with well used trucks, tankers and vans it is as frequently gridlocked as the surface is pot-holed. “It breaks my Range Rover every time I drive on it” Bob Collymore, CEO of Safaricom told me, before going on to highlight the similar issues the country has with power supply and public transport. The almost...