CAIRO, Egypt-Orascom Telecom, which owns stakes in Egypt’s largest mobile provider, agreed to buy 80 percent of Telecel International, a pan-African telecommunications company that holds 12 Global System for Mobile communications licenses in Sub-Saharan Africa. The deal is worth $213 million and is the largest acquisition ever by an Egyptian company, the Financial Times reported.
OT already owns a GSM license in the Republic of Congo. With the Telecel acquisition, it will have operations in Benin, Burundi, Chad, Gabon, the Central African Republic, Ivory Coast, Niger, Nigeria, Togo, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe, the report said.
OT has a stake in a consortium, led by France Telecom and Motorola Inc., which recently acquired Egyptian Mobile Telephone Services Co. The new operating company, MobilNil, owns one of two GSM 900 licenses in Egypt and has about 100,000 subscribers.
