Bharti promises $600 million investment in Nigeria’s telecom industry

Bharti Airtel will invest $600 million in Nigeria's mobile phone market, hoping to expand coverage across the rural pasturelands of Africa's most populous nation, the Indian company's international CEO said Tuesday. Manoj Kohil told journalists that the world's fifth largest telecommunications company hoped an aggressive expansion in Nigeria would raise its profile as an emerging market powerhouse.
Bharti recently closed a $10.7 billion deal with Kuwait-based Zain to take over its holdings in Nigeria and 14 other African nations. “If a company hopes to grow, they have to be in Africa,” Kohil told journalists at a news conference in Lagos. "The jewel of Africa is Nigeria.”
However, Bharti will face a fight in its hopes to expand in Nigeria, a country of 150 million people. South Africa-based MTN already holds a 50 percent market share in the country. Kohil also acknowledged Zain customers in Nigeria on average use only 50 minutes of airtime a month -- compared to 450 minutes in its home base of India, where it has 125 million customers.
Nigeria, long troubled by pothole-littered roads and little electricity, has few fixed land lines as the national telephone company remains mired in corruption and a bureaucratic malaise. Normal Nigerians and even private companies rely on mobile phones to communicate, though many carry two or more phones with different carriers to ensure they can make calls.
To draw customers, Kohil said Bharti will build cell towers into rural Nigeria to improve signals. However, each tower must have its own generators and make tempting targets for thieves in a country where most people earn less than $1 a day. Kohil said Bharti faced similar challenges when it expanded into 450,000 villages across rural India. “We have full faith that the villagers themselves will take care of the sites that keeps them globally connected,” he said.
Another boost for Bharti may come from the Nigerian government. Kohil said he held talks with Nigerian officials about mobile phone number portability -- allowing customers to keep the same number when they change carriers. The CEO said he believed Nigeria's government would allow that soon, but said officials gave him no timeline on when they planned to implement it.
Bharti's new Africa holdings also include Burkina Faso, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Madagascar, Niger, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.