Liquid Telecom in Rwandatel acquisition
Liquid Telecom, in which South African ICT group Altech has a minority stake, has acquired the assets of Rwandatel, Rwanda’s fixed line network operator.
The deal includes Rwandatel’s copper and fibre network and its customer base but excludes most of the land, which remains the property of Rwandatel.
This transaction comes four months after Liquid acquired the East African assets of The Altech Group, including a controlling interest in Kenya Data Networks (KDN).
In January Altech said it had disposed of its East African operations in a deal that would see Liquid Telecom taking over the group’s relevant assets.
As part of the deal, Altech purchased an additional ordinary shareholding in Liquid to the amount of US$16.5 million, taking an 8.6% stake in Liquid’s issued share capital.
Liquid’s fibre network spans over 13,000km across Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, DRC, Lesotho and South Africa.
Nic Rudnick, CEO of the Liquid Telecom Group, said: “Liquid Telecom is expanding rapidly and this is an important and strategic investment. Rwanda is an outstanding FDI destination and we are very confident in the country’s economic future and growth prospects.”
Sam Nkusi, chairman of Liquid Telecom Rwanda, said: “Our priority is to quickly rehabilitate Rwandatel’s core network and to build out the access network in order to serve Rwanda’s people and businesses with the most reliable, high speed, and affordable telecommunications.”
Work on network improvements and expansion is expected to start within weeks.
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