Airtel to sell telecom tower assets in Zambia and Rwanda to IHS

The deals will allow Airtel to focus on its core business, reduce debt and cut down on capex

Telecommunications services provider Bharti Airtel, which has operations in 20 countries across Asia and Africa, and African telecommunications infrastructure provider IHS Holding have signed an agreement under which latter will acquire about 1,100 telecom towers across Zambia and Rwanda.

The agreements will allow Airtel to focus on its core business and customers, enabling it to deleverage through debt reduction. And, will significantly reduce its ongoing capital expenditure on passive infrastructure in African markets.

For IHS, the acquisition is another major step towards the scale needed to provide shared telecom infrastructure solutions in Africa. IHS customers, and mobile network operators, will benefit from lower operating costs, expanded network coverage and accelerated network roll out times, higher network capacity and improved quality of service. The benefits for mobile subscribers will be a more stable network, higher network uptimes in which to make calls and a more ubiquitous service across the country.

The agreements are subject to statutory and regulatory approvals.

Issam Darwish, Executive Vice Chairman and Group Chief Executive Officer of IHS, commented, “We have been working with Airtel for many years. And we are very pleased to have signed our first Buy and Lease Back transaction with Airtel. The opportunity to expand our East African business bringing IHS’ market leading energy and infrastructure management practices to a wider market is an excellent opportunity. We are very excited that following this deal more mobile phone users will benefit from the efficiencies and increased network uptimes that will result.”