Airtel Africa PLC said Wednesday that it has agreed to sell its telecommunications mobile phone tower assets in Tanzania for a gross consideration of $176.1 million.
The telecommunication giant said it received its first payment of $159 million from the sale.
The telecommunications and mobile money services provider said it has agreed to sell the assets to a joint venture company owned by a wholly-owned subsidiary of SBA Communications Corp. and Paradigm Infrastructure Ltd.
Around $60 million of the proceeds will be invested in network and sales infrastructure in Tanzania and for distribution to the Tanzania government, with the balance of the proceeds used to reduce debt, it added.
The $176.1 million sale of the 1,400 or so Tanzanian towers was agreed in June, 2021.
The balance of the sale payment will be made in instalments once the transfer of the remaining towers is completed.
Meanwhile, in Seychelles, Airtel is welcoming local and international companies to make use of its state-of-the-art data storage facility recently opened at Perseverance.
The new data centre follows the company’s mission to provide globally admired technologies and services to give Africa an easy and dependable way to connect to the world. The tier-three data centre has been built with the latest technologies.
“To be part of the data value chain which include processing, analytics, storage, security and intellectual property, we need a certain amount of connectivity and a certain number of data centres to be present in the country. So, this project is exciting, not just because it is a data storage centre but it is one that breaks new ground in technology development,” said Amadou Dina, the company’s managing director.
