CAIRO, Egypt-Orascom Telecom (OT), 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 GSM licenses in Sub-Saharan Africa. The deal is worth US$213 million.
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, which recently acquired Egyptian Mobile Telephone Services Co., led by France Telecom and Motorola. The new operating company, MobilNil, owns one of two GSM 900 licenses in Egypt and has about 100,000 subscribers.
OT plans an initial public offering of its shares in May.
