Another Ambani vs Mittal battle? A look into Airtel's African empire
Africa as in India. It is the second-biggest telecom company in the continent after South Africa's MTN. Fourteen years ago, Bharti Airtel chairman Sunil Mittal took the brave decision to go to Africa and it has been a perilous journey for his company. Africa, where Mittal had expected to map India's telecom growth story onto the continent, turned out to be little like India with its sparse population as well as political volatility which would discourage any pioneer telecom company.
Now that Airtel Africa seems to be out of the woods, and having acquired an elephantine footprint in 14 countries across the continent, a big challenge might be shaping up. Mukesh Ambani, the chairman of Reliance Industries (RIL), who disrupted India's telecom market with low tariffs and cheap handsets by launching Reliance Jio in 2015 and swept aside Airtel to become the market leader, is acquiring a tiny foothold in the African telecom market as a telecom tech and equipment vendor.
Also Read: RIL's Mukesh Ambani set for African safari with 5G tech solutions
An RIL entity is set to offer a range of 5G shared network infrastructure solutions in Africa with a local company backed by Ghana. Radisys, owned by RIL unit Jio Platforms Ltd, along with Tech Mahindra and Finland's Nokia, is partnering with Next-Gen Infrastructure Co. (NGIC), in which the Ghanaian government, Ascend Digital and K-Net hold equity, for the foray. NGIC, which is the first neutral 5G shared infrastructure provider in Africa, plans to offer 4G and 5G network support
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